AI successfully predicts earthquake aftershocks.
Nature says the earthquake prophet is IN. Or in the machine at least. For the first time, a machine-learning system beat human experts at figuring […]
geology
Science Art: Fall des Meteors am 9 Juni 1866, by Wilhelm Ritter von Haidinger
Click to embiggen Wilhelm Ritter von Haidinger was an Austrian mineralogist who during his career helped mining engineers dig better mines and looked at rocks […]
De Beers sells synthetic diamonds.
The Guardian reveals that De Beers, the monolithic diamond firm (which has made artificial scarcity its business model for the better part of a century […]
Science Art: Cross-Section of a Typical Volcano, from Minor Mining Encyclopedia
Click to embiggen What’s inside a Ukranian volcano. Or most volcanoes, wherever the are. From a Ukranian encyclopedia for Ukrainian miners (ISBN 966-7804-14-3).
SONG: Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons
SONG: “Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons”. ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: “Incredible ‘Hypatia’ Stone Contains Compounds Not Found in the Solar System”, Popular Mechanics, 10 Jan 2018, as used in […]
Hypatia: A stone older than the solar system
Popular Mechanics takes a long look at what, at first glance, might easily be dismissed as another Egyptian desert pebble – but is, in fact, […]
Human-triggered earthquakes – how do we know?
Nature is following the geologists who are tracking, for the first time, the impressive number of – and factors involved in –earthquakes believed to be […]
SONG: Frozen Atmospheres
SONG: “Frozen Atmospheres”. ARTIST: grant. SOURCE:Record-shattering 2.7-million-year-old ice core reveals start of the ice ages,” Science, 15 Aug 2017, as used in the post “2.7 […]
NASA’s got a plan to save us from supervolcanoes – by using them for power.
BBC has more on the planet-spanning threat of supervolcanoes – like the one under Yellowstone that’s about due for a continent-shaking eruption – and their […]
2.7 million-year-old ice shatters records, reveals ancient atmospheres – and ice ages.
(Plural intended.) Science magazine looks back at lots of tiny, tiny pockets of the distant past – with a deep ice core that contains samples […]
50 years ago, Surtsey Island came into being. Now, we’re drilling to find out how.
Nature reports on scientists with big drills in Iceland, trying to find out how it was that Surtsey Island came rising up from the ocean […]
Ancient pottery reveals the past of Earth’s magnetic field.
NPR has more on how potters inadvertently preserved a record of Earth’s magnetic field 3,000 years ago: About 3,000 years ago, a potter near Jerusalem […]
Our first breath of air, analyzed 2.3 billion years later.
Science Daily peeks into the deep, deep history of the “Great Oxidation Event,” analyzing a very old sample of some of the first oxygen to […]
Science Art: Rift in Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf, by NASA/John Sonntag
Click to embiggen Big valley in the Antarctic ice. A bonus image for the New Year, from NASA’s Image Gallery, photographed a couple weeks before […]
Science Art: Mt. Balfour, Antarctica, by NASA/Joe MacGregor
Click to embiggen This photo is part of NASA’s IceBridge mission, an airborne survey of polar ice, which completed an eighth consecutive Antarctic deployment on […]