Geology

Each year lightning kills hundreds of millions of trees worldwide, leaving behind scorched trunks and shattered branches, but one species of tropical tree in Panama has turned this destructive force of nature to their advantage.

For ages, Earth has been known as a blue planet, a vision largely shaped by the vast oceans that cover three-quarters of its surface. But what if this wasn't always the case, and our oceans used to be green?

A subtle yet significant phenomenon is occurring beneath the North American continent; its ancient bedrock is slowly dripping into the Earth’s mantle, creating a funnel-like structure concentrated over the Midwest of the United States.

Step aside, golden beaches – New Zealand has stretches of sand sparkling with real gold. And with this, scientists have been able to assemble the world's first atlas of highly detailed beach gold found along the country's South Island coastline.

Scientists have discovered the world’s oldest known meteorite impact crater in Western Australia. It has been dated to about 3.5 billion years ago, at a time when these almost literally Earth-shattering events should have been occurring regularly.

A preserved tree fossil gives an unprecedented view into a moment 42,000 years ago when the Earth’s magnetic field went haywire, triggering environmental chaos, influencing everything from an increase in cave paintings to the Neanderthal extinction.

Saturn’s rings are iconic, but new evidence presented by researchers from Monash University suggests Earth might once have sported one of its own. This ring would likely have caused climate chaos on the surface.

Stumbling on a giant gold nugget and never working again is something we’ve all daydreamed about, but how exactly do they form? A new experiment has found that earthquakes and electricity might be key ingredients.

Geologists have drilled deeper than ever into material from the Earth’s mantle – more than three quarters of a mile. The sample gives a glimpse into the geology and even life in a deep world normally beyond our reach.

A new study of ancient detrital zircons from inland Australia has found the first evidence that the Earth has had fresh water and dry land four billion years ago, much longer than previously thought. In fact, 500 million years further back in time.

The ancient Egyptians may have had help building the pyramids after all – not from aliens but a long-lost river. Evidence of a previously uncharted branch of the Nile has been found snaking along the pyramids, suggesting blocks were floated to sites.

The Krafla Magma Testbed "has the potential to be for geoscientists what the Large Hadron Collider has been for particle physicists." So say researchers working on the project to drill into a magma chamber to explore massive geothermal power.