Tag: Geology
Limestone and iron reveal puzzling extreme rain in Western Australia 100,000 years ago
Otherworldly karst landscapes, such as Western Australia’s famous Pinnacles, hold clues about Earth’s climate history – and future.
Can we find hidden graves of murder victims with soil imaging? New Australian study gives it a try
Borrowed from geology, subsurface imaging may help us solve crimes – if we know how best to use the tools.
Humanity needs more rare earth elements. Extinct volcanoes could be a rich new source
Rare earth elements aren’t necessarily rare – they’re just difficult to find in economically viable deposits.
Hidden craters reveal Earth may once have had a ring – like Saturn
Mounting evidence suggests the rubble of an asteroid once formed a ring orbiting our planet’s equator.
How do you make a giant gold nugget? Take a vein of quartz, add a few thousand earthquakes
Gold nuggets grow much bigger than they should – and electricity produced by earthquakes may be the reason why.
Australia’s largest iron ore deposits are 1 billion years younger than we thought
How did Australia end up with so much iron ore? What we discovered in Western Australia redefines how we think about iron deposits – and provides clues on how we might find more.
Not just space rocks: 6 things we’ve learned about Earth from meteorites and comets
Vast amounts of space rocks litter our Solar System, and sometimes land on Earth’s surface. There are many things we can learn from them.
A groundbreaking discovery: how we found remnants of Earth’s primordial crust near Perth
Life depends on Earth’s ancient continental crust – but there are only a few places where remnants of it can still be seen today.
South Australia’s enigmatic pink sand was born in ice-covered Antarctic mountains, new research shows
The hunt for the origin of garnet crystals found on South Australian beaches took researchers thousands of kilometres and half a billion years back in time to a hidden Antarctic mountain range.
‘It could be the death of the museum’: why research cuts at a South Australian institution have scientists up in arms
Experts say the ‘reimagining’ of the South Australian Museum will destroy its crucial contributions to science.
New evidence for an unexpected player in Earth’s multimillion-year climate cycles: the planet Mars
Deep-sea sediments show how the changing orbits of Earth and Mars are linked to past global warming and the speeding up of deep-ocean eddies.
People once lived in a vast region in north-western Australia – and it had an inland sea
Our new study reveals a mosaic of habitable landscapes – now submerged by the ocean – once supported up to 500,000 people living in Australia’s northwest.
New unified theory shows how past landscapes drove the evolution of Earth's rich diversity of life
For decades, scientists have tried to uncover the cause of long-term changes in Earth’s biodiversity. New simulations point at geography playing a critical role.
NASA's Psyche asteroid mission: a 3.6 billion kilometre 'journey to the centre of the Earth'
A distant lump of space rock may have a surprising amount in common with the core of our own planet.
Most pink diamonds were birthed by a disintegrating supercontinent. Where can we find more?
More than 90% of the world’s pink diamonds came from a single mine that closed in 2020. Geologists are only now beginning to understand the forces that create the rare, highly prized gems.
