Geology

A new study shows that tectonic activity may have caused sections of Venus’ planetary crust to become fragmented into smaller bodies that barge past each other like chunks of ice on water. The planet may still be capable of hosting tectonic activity.

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.

Geologists have studied tiny fluid impurities in diamonds to figure out how old humanity’s favorite rocks might be. They identified three periods of diamond formation in Africa over billions of years, with intriguing implications for ancient Earth.

Geologists have pieced together an uncertain part of Earth’s ancient history. A team in Australia has found new evidence that suggests the cycle of supercontinents forming and breaking up only started about two billion years ago.

Geologists have discovered a new type of rock. While drilling deep into the seafloor, a team of scientists found a new form of basalt vastly different from any other on Earth, and the planet hasn’t produced any more of it for millions of years.

A growing body of evidence points to the Red Planet being much bluer in its ancient past. Where all that water went is a key question, with many scientists believing it escaped into space. New analysis suggests another answer: it retreated underground.

Some scientists speculate that for a while Earth's surface was one big ocean of magma. Now, a team of Cambridge researchers has found elusive evidence from that time, dredged up from an ancient crystal graveyard at the fringe of the mantle and core.

A new study has found that in about a billion years’ time, Earth will rapidly lose most of its atmospheric oxygen, returning to how it was billions of years ago. This may have important implications in the search for life on other planets.

Oregon State University researchers have found that fin whale songs interact with the ocean floor, being reflected and refracted by the sediments and bedrock, and can be used to measure the thickness of these layers as well as providing other data.

Venus may not have had Earth-like tectonic plates for the last billion years, according to the results of a new study. Instead, the planet, which is often referred to as Earth’s twin, may be covered in a single thick outer plate.

Exotic forms of carbon were predicted to exist under extremely high pressures. But in a new study researchers have examined carbon under the highest pressure ever studied in the lab, and found that diamond sticks around much longer than expected.

Ordinarily, if you want to know how soil properties change at different depths, you have to extract soil core samples. Scientists have now determined that the same data can be obtained much more easily, using ground-penetrating radar.