Science

Proglacial icing formed in the bed of a glacial river during the Arctic winter. Credit: Gabrielle Kleber As the Arctic warms, shrinking glaciers are exposing bubbling groundwater springs which could provide an underestimated source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, finds new research published in Nature Geoscience. The study,…

Viscosity jump in the Earth's lower mantle. Credit: Hongzhan Fei An international research team led by Prof. Dr. Tomoo Katsura at the Bavarian Research Institute of Experimental Geochemistry and Geophysics, University of Bayreuth, has discovered why rocks in the Earth's interior suddenly become more viscous at depths of 800 to 1,200 km. The cause of this change is the bridgmanite-enriched rocks that make up most of the Earth's…

Credit: Anney_Lier/Shutterstock You might remember newspaper articles in 2021 claiming that towing nets over the seabed to catch fish (known as bottom trawling) releases as much carbon as all flights taken each year. It turns out that the assessment behind this claim overestimated how much CO₂ is released in the process of bottom trawling by 100 to 1,000 times. …

The dark region in the lower part of the image shows crystalized bridgmanite, and the dendritic texture in the upper part indicates quenched melt. Credit: Geodynamics Research Center, Ehime University The link between a planetary interior and its surface is a key to understanding the formation process of the surface environment of the planet. …

A rare deep-sea creature with engorged belly from recent meal…

Figure 1. (A) Anthropogenic (blue) and volcanic (orange) effective radiative forcing functions adopted by the CMIP6 GCMs. (B) Possible solar effective radiative forcing functions. Credit: Geoscience Frontiers (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.gsf.2023.101650 Although the sun provides nearly all the energy needed to warm the planet, its contribution to climate change remains widely questioned. Many empirically based studies claim that it…

Reconstruction of the rhynchosaur Bentonyx from the Middle Triassic of Devon, about 245 million years ago. Credit: Mark WittonResearchers at the University of Bristol have unveiled new insights into the existence of the prehistoric Rhynchosaur, a reptile <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>species</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>A species is a group of living organisms that share a set of common characteristics and are…

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completed its 16th Sun orbit on June 27, 2023, coming within 5.3 million miles during its perihelion. Credit: Ben Smith/ Applied Physics Laboratory/ NASA<span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>NASA</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National…

Researchers from University College London's Institute of Archaeology have uncovered a cache of 800 stone artefacts dating to more than 300,000 years ago. The find includes one of the largest hand-axes ever unearthed in Britain.The archeological excavation of the new Paleolithic site at Manor Farm in Frindsbury, Kent, began in early 2021, ahead of the development of the site into a new school called the Maritime Academy.While digging into sediment thought to have been part of a tributary of the River Medway from the…

The global averageatmospheric temperature on Tuesday, July 4, was 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking the previous record of 62.6 degrees on July 3, according to data that is collected daily by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and compiled by the University of Maine. In a separate assessment released Thursday, the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a division of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, found that June 2023 was the hottest June…