The deadly volcanic eruption of Anak Krakatoa in 2018 unleashed a wave at least 100m high that could have caused widespread devastation had it been travelling in another direction, new research shows. Over 400 people lost their lives in December...
In a recently published study, researchers from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology revealed the largest and hottest shield volcano on Earth. A team of volcanologists and ocean explorers used several...
Operational models for severe weather forecasting predicted Hurricane Harvey would become a Category 1 hurricane in 2017, according to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. Instead, it became a massive Category 4 just before it made landfall, tying Hurricane...
On an expedition to the Central Andean Plateau, researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and colleagues were astounded to find a huge fossil-tree buried in the cold, grassy plain. The plant fossil record from this high-altitude site...
Wells that extract natural gas from underground often leak large amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, into the air. A team of Princeton University researchers has found that, in one of the biggest gas-producing regions, most of these...
Rome wasn't built in a day, but some of Earth's finest gemstones were, according to new research from Rice University. Aquamarine, emerald, garnet, zircon and topaz are but a few of the crystalline minerals found mostly in pegmatites, veinlike formations...
Late in the prehistoric Silurian Period, around 420 million years ago, a devastating mass extinction event wiped 23 percent of all marine animals from the face of the planet. For years, scientists struggled to connect a mechanism to this mass extinction,...
Far below Bermuda's pink sand beaches and turquoise tides, geoscientists have discovered the first direct evidence that material from deep within Earth's mantle transition zone—a layer rich in water, crystals and melted rock—can percolate to the surface to form...
Volcanic activity did not play a direct role in the mass extinction event that killed the dinosaurs, according to an international, Yale-led team of researchers. It was all about the asteroid. In a break from a number of other recent...
The existence of a tectonic plate called Resurrection has long been a topic of debate among geologists, with some arguing it was never real. Others say it subducted—moved sideways and downward—into the earth's mantle somewhere in the Pacific Margin...
Exhaustive seismic data from repeating earthquakes and new data-processing methods have yielded the best evidence yet that the Earth's inner core is rotating—revealing a better understanding of the hotly debated processes that control the planet's magnetic field. The new study...