Archive for the 'Geology-Geography' Category
Volcano Erupts off Yemen Coast
By Ahmed Al-Haj, The Associated Press
posted: 01 October 2007 12:40 pm ET
SAN’A, Yemen (AP) — NATO ships responding to a “catastrophic” volcanic eruption on a tiny Yemeni island rescued two survivors Monday but also pulled four dead from the Red Sea, officials said. Two people remained missing.
The eruption began Sunday evening on Jabal al-Tair, an oval island about two miles across that is unpopulated except for a small Yemeni military base used for naval control of nearby shipping lanes.
The eruption collapsed part of the island, which is about 70 miles off the Yemeni coast, and covered the rest with lava, forcing authorities to evacuate the base, the Yemeni news agency SABA reported.
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Minerals and wine make fine combo
PERTH, Australia, Sept. 15 (UPI) – An Australian scientist has discovered that a glass of wine can help in finding new mineral deposits.
Ryan Noble, a mining scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, said he has found that weak organic acids and other chemicals in wine and soft drinks will dissolve weakly-bound metals into solution, the CSIRO said Friday.
No commentsDeep Volcanic Fizz Forces Earth to Burp
By Ker Than, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 12 July 2007 02:00 pm ET
Like rising bubbles in champagne, gases from Earth’s interior can ascend to the surface and cause magma to explode in dangerous splatters.
A new study, detailed in the July 13 issue of the journal Science, shows that these volcanic “gas slugs” originate from deeper inside the planet than previously thought.
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Mysterious Clouds Creeping Out of the Arctic
By Dave Mosher, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 28 June 2007 05:38 pm ET
A new NASA satellite has recorded the first detailed images from space of a mysterious type of cloud called “night-shining” or “noctilucent.”
The clouds are on the move, brightening and creeping out of polar regions, and researchers don’t know why.
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Researchers: Antarctica ice sheet stable
By RAY LILLEY, Associated Press Writer Wed Jun 27, 1:56 AM ET
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - An ice sheet in Antarctica that is the world’s largest — with enough water to raise global sea levels by 200 feet — is relatively stable and poses no immediate threat, according to new research.
While studies of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets show they are both at risk from global warming, the East Antarctic ice sheet will “need quite a bit of warming” to be affected, Andrew Mackintosh, a senior lecturer at Victoria University, said Wednesday.
No commentsThick Layer of Magma Found Under American Southwest
By Ker Than, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 22 June 2007 12:52 pm ET
Scientists have spotted a thick layer of melted rock beneath the Earth’s crust that could be part of a fluid band of hot magma circling the globe. The magma ring has until now remained a theory.
No commentsExpedition Seeks Primordial Life Beneath the Arctic
By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 21 June 2007 12:14 pm ET
Explorers are setting out to see if a hydrothermal vent system near the North Pole could harbor never-seen-before life forms that have remained isolated for tens of millions of years.
On July 1, an international research team is expected to depart from the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard aboard the icebreaker “Oden” for a 40-day expedition to hunt for life along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain range extending 1,100 miles from north of Greenland toward Siberia and marking the boundary between two tectonic plates.
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Source of Major Earthquakes Discovered Beneath U.S. Heartland
By Robin Lloyd, LiveScience Senior Editor
posted: 02 May 2007 01:06 pm ET
Scientists have finally figured out what might have caused a series of devastating earthquakes that struck the Midwest nearly 200 years ago at a set of faults that has confused geologists for a long time.
And the results suggest the region, still seismically active today, is going to keep shaking for a long time, and another big one will hit on the same 500-year cycle that has rocked the Heartland for as far back as records, legends and memory serve.
The largest of three or four big seismic events that stretched from December 1811 to February 1812 is called the New Madrid Earthquake and had an estimated 8.0 magnitude, strong enough to cause the nearby Mississippi River to temporarily flow backward. Its epicenter was in the town of New Madrid in southeast Missouri, near the Kentucky and Tennessee state lines. Hundreds of aftershocks followed for several years.
No commentsVolcanoes Triggered Ancient Warming Event
By Ker Than, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 26 April 2007 02:13 pm ET
The same volcanic eruptions that sundered Greenland from Western Europe and created Iceland also triggered intense global warming 55 million years ago, scientists say.
“There has been evidence in the marine record of this period of global warming, and evidence in the geologic record of the eruptions at roughly the same time,” said study team member Robert Duncan, an oceanic scientist at Oregon State University, “but until now there has been no direct link between the two.”
During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), massive amounts of greenhouse gases were injected into the oceans and atmosphere, causing global sea surface temperatures to rise by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
The event changed global rainfall patterns, broiled and acidified the oceans, and killed up to 50 percent of the world’s deep-sea organisms. The warm climate also opened up new migration routes for horses and other mammals into North America and might have even fueled early primate evolution.
No commentsOutdoor 7-Story Lab Simulates Big Earthquake
By Tom Chao, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 25 April 2007 08:53 am ET
Researchers have built a seven-story, 275-ton building on the world’s largest outdoor shake table and vibrated it to reproduce the motions of the powerful Northridge earthquake in California.
The Jan 17, 1994 Northridge quake, at magnitude 6.7 with an epicenter in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, was the costliest temblor in U.S. history and killed 72 people.
A total of 600 sensors recorded the impact on the building at the University of California, San Diego, while cameras recorded the movement, generating an immense amount of data.
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