Titan May Have a Methane Crust 10 Km Thick
Saturn’s moon, Titan, is an anomaly among moons. No other moons have surface liquids, and aside from Earth, it’s the only other Solar System object with liquids on its surface. However, since Titan is so cold, the liquids are hydrocarbons, not water. Titan’s water is all frozen into a surface layer of ice. New research…
Will Mount Everest always be the world’s tallest mountain?
Mount Everest is the world's tallest mountain as measured from sea level. But will it hold that title forever?To answer this question, first we must understand how mountains form and how Mount Everest and the rest of the Himalayas got so tall. One way tall mountains form is when two tectonic plates collide. As one…
Earth’s mantle is split into two halves thanks to supercontinent Pangaea
Earth's mantle is split by the Pacific Ring of Fire, an ancient schism that reflects the creation and destruction of the supercontinent Pangaea, a new study finds.One of these sections contains most of Earth's land. Called the African domain, it stretches from the east coast of Asia and Australia across Europe, Africa and the Atlantic…
Scientists Determine the Age of the Moon’s Oldest and Largest Impact...
The massive South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin is one of the Moon’s dominant features, though it’s not visible from Earth. It’s on the lunar far side, and only visible to spacecraft. It’s one of the largest impact features in the Solar System, and there are many outstanding questions about it. What type of impactor created it?…
Listen to haunting sounds of Earth’s magnetic field flipping 41,000 years...
A captivating new video shows how Earth's magnetic field went haywire and almost completely disappeared during our planet's most recent "polar reversal event," around 41,000 years ago. A haunting soundscape of "alien-like" creaking sounds emphasizes the strain put on our planet's invisible protective shield.Earth's magnetic field, or magnetosphere, first formed up to 3.7 billion years…
Which are rarer: diamonds or emeralds?
Sparkling diamonds and verdant emeralds are some of the most coveted and priciest gemstones. But which precious stones are rarer: diamonds or emeralds?In terms of total known deposits, emeralds are rarer. There are 49 emerald deposits, according to a 2019 review in the journal Minerals. In comparison, there are about 1,000 rock formations that contain…
Carlsbad Caverns: New Mexico’s otherworldly caves with gypsum flowers and ‘soda...
QUICK FACTSName: Carlsbad CavernsLocation: New MexicoCoordinates: 32.13721555956437, -104.5427096972203Why it's incredible: The caverns hold astonishing limestone formations and gypsum crystals.Carlsbad Caverns is a maze of underground caves born from an ancient tropical reef. The caverns house North America's largest cave chamber, "the Big Room," which boasts a floor area of 8.2 acres — equivalent to more…
Earth’s crust may be building mountains by dripping into the mantle
Earth's crust may "drip" into its middle layer under growing mountain ranges.This odd process, called lithospheric dripping, has been proposed to occur under the Andes, in Central Asia, in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and along the west coast of Canada. Now, researchers have found that the Anatolian plateau in Turkey is undergoing a similar process.The…
Mystery iron-rich magma entombed in dead volcanoes could be rich source...
Volcanoes that are rich in iron might be prime locations to find high concentrations of rare earth elements. Recent lab experiments have demonstrated that when iron-rich magmas experience volcanic pressures and temperatures, the resulting iron oxide-apatite (IOA) deposit separates into two unmixable melts, one of which is highly enriched in rare earth elements (REEs)."The rare…
‘Many more ancient structures waiting to be discovered’: Lost chunk of...
Scientists have discovered the "fossilized fingerprint" of a chunk of seafloor that was hiding beneath the Pacific Ocean in Earth's mantle.A new study shows that this fingerprint corresponds to a slab of Earth's crust that began sinking into the mantle approximately 250 million years ago, at the dawn of the age of dinosaurs (252 million…