Physical sciences articles within Nature Geoscience

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  • All Minerals Considered |

    Burbankite is a rare sodium carbonate mineral that is easily dissolved away in its host igneous rocks. Its formation and dissolution can help concentrate rare earth elements that are vital for a low-carbon future, as Sam Broom-Fendley explains.

    • Sam Broom-Fendley

  • World View |

    Research on the energy transition needs to involve all communities and requires breaking the paradigm of traditional industry-funded research, argues Jef Caers from his personal story.

    • Jef Caers

  • Research Briefing |

    A remotely-operated underwater vehicle was used to map the ice, ocean, and seafloor conditions near the point where the floating Ross Ice Shelf meets the seafloor, also known as the grounding line. The study identified refreezing crevasses and geomorphological signatures of past grounding line retreat.

  • Research Briefing |

    The environmental sensors aboard the Perseverance rover on Mars are gathering meteorological data at Jezero crater. These data capture an active atmospheric surface layer that responds to multiple dynamical phenomena, ranging in spatial and temporal scales from metres to thousands of kilometres and from seconds to a Martian year, respectively.

  • News & Views |

    Analysis of global ocean carbonate chemistry and water mass age information confirms the substantial in situ dissolution of calcium carbonate particles in the upper water column.

    • Kitack Lee
    •  & Richard A. Feely

  • Editorial |

    China’s rigorous air-pollution control has greatly reduced the levels of fine particles in the atmosphere. Further progress for air quality more broadly will rely on fully accounting for complex chemical reactions between pollutants.

  • News & Views |

    Earth’s formation by the accretion of volatile-rich carbonaceous chondrite-like materials, without a need for exotic building blocks or secondary volatile loss, is supported by recognition of a plateau pattern for highly volatile elements.

    • Zaicong Wang

  • News & Views |

    Extreme temperature swings and deteriorating environments are perhaps what killed most life in the end-Permian extinction, suggest climate model simulations. Siberian Traps volcanism probably triggered the events.

    • Ying Cui

  • News & Views |

    Geoscientists are training computers to learn from a wide range of geologic data and, in the process, the machines are teaching geoscientists about the workings of Earth.

    • Chris Marone

  • News & Views |

    Estimates of carbon in the deep mantle vary by more than an order of magnitude. Coupled volcanic CO2 emission data and magma supply rates reveal a carbon-rich mantle plume source region beneath Hawai'i with 40% more carbon than previous estimates.

    • Peter H. Barry

  • Article |

    The brittle–ductile transition is thought to control crustal permeability. Laboratory experiments and model simulations show that permeability is also stress dependent and ductile granitic rocks may have enough permeability to host geothermal resources.

    • Noriaki Watanabe
    • , Tatsuya Numakura
    •  & Noriyoshi Tsuchiya

  • Editorial |

    Born from astronomy, the study of planets is becoming increasingly geoscience. As divisions between disciplines continue to blur in Solar System studies, at Nature Geoscience we are looking forward to exciting joint projects with Nature Astronomy.

  • News & Views |

    Large quantities of organic carbon are stored in the ocean, but its biogeochemical behaviour is elusive. Size–age–composition relations now quantify the production of tiny organic molecules as a major pathway for carbon sequestration.

    • Rainer M. W. Amon

  • News & Views |

    Soil carbon stocks depend on inputs from decomposing vegetation and return to the atmosphere as CO2. Monitoring of carbon stocks in German alpine soils has shown large losses linked to climate change and a possible positive feedback loop.

    • Guy Kirk

  • News & Views |

    Microbes quickly consumed much of the methane released in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Time-series measurements now suggest that, after a steep rise, methane oxidation rates crashed while hydrocarbon discharge was still continuing at the wellhead.

    • Evan A. Solomon

  • Letter |

    Saturn is brighter than expected for a gas giant of its age. Calculations of Saturn’s thermal evolution show that the presence of layered convection in Saturn’s interior—much like that observed in the Earth’s oceans—would have slowed the planet’s cooling and may explain Saturn’s anomalous luminosity.

    • Jérémy Leconte
    •  & Gilles Chabrier

  • Article |

    Lunar samples suggest that the inner Solar System was bombarded by asteroids about 4 Gyr ago. Radiometric ages of meteorites suggest an unusual number of high-velocity asteroids at this time, consistent with a dynamical origin of the bombardment in which the asteroids were pushed by outer planet migration onto highly eccentric orbits.

    • S. Marchi
    • , W. F. Bottke
    •  & C. T. Russell

  • Letter |

    A whirling vortex has been observed in the atmosphere at the south pole of Venus. Cloud motions tracked by the Venus Express spacecraft suggest that the south polar vortex is long-lived, erratic and baroclinic in character.

    • I. Garate-Lopez
    • , R. Hueso
    •  & P. Drossart

  • Letter |

    Fluids flowing through cavities in Earth’s crust can deposit gold. Thermo-mechanical modelling of a fluid-filled cavity that expands suddenly during an earthquake shows that the drop in pressure would cause the fluid to vaporize and deposit the gold almost instantaneously.

    • Dion K. Weatherley
    •  & Richard W. Henley

  • Commentary |

    Over the past fifty years, NASA has pushed the frontiers of science and exploration to the edges of our Solar System. Declining funding for research and robotic missions may leave planetary exploration unfinished and young scientists stranded.

    • Paul O. Hayne

  • Editorial |

    Extrasolar planet research is booming. We welcome submissions with links to the geosciences.

  • Commentary |

    The dawn of exoplanet discovery has unearthed a rich tapestry of planets different from anything encountered in the Solar System. Geoscientists can and should be in the vanguard of investigating what is out there in the Universe.

    • Raymond T. Pierrehumbert

  • News & Views |

    Thirty years ago, the spacecraft Pioneer Venus observed the peak and decline of sulphur dioxide levels above Venus's clouds. Similar observations by Venus Express reveal a surprisingly variable venusian atmosphere.

    • Larry W. Esposito

  • Letter |

    A pulse of sulphur dioxide in Venus’s upper atmosphere was observed by the Pioneer Venus spacecraft in the 1970s and 1980s and attributed to volcanism. Recent sulphur dioxide measurements from Venus Express indicate decadal-scale fluctuations in sulphur dioxide above Venus’s cloud tops in an atmosphere that is more dynamic than expected.

    • Emmanuel Marcq
    • , Jean-Loup Bertaux
    •  & Denis Belyaev

  • News & Views |

    The surface of the Moon is not totally devoid of water. Analyses of lunar soils reveal that impact glasses contain significant amounts of water, with an isotopic composition that is indicative of an origin from the solar wind.

    • Marc Chaussidon

  • News & Views |

    Enigmatically, some landslides flow farther than normal frictional resistance allows. Cassini images of Saturn's icy moon Iapetus reveal a multitude of long-runout landslides that may have been enabled by flash heating along the sliding surface.

    • Antoine Lucas

  • Article |

    The great distance travelled by long-runout landslides, observed previously on the Earth and Mars, requires a mechanism of friction reduction. Identification and analysis of long-runout landslides on Saturn’s moon Iapetus suggests that the Iapetian landslides are enabled by flash heating of the icy sliding surface.

    • Kelsi N. Singer
    • , William B. McKinnon
    •  & Jeffery M. Moore

  • Letter |

    The mantles of the terrestrial planets contain elemental abundances that suggest accretion continued at a late stage, after core formation. Geochemical data of meteorites from differentiated asteroids are consistent with such a late accretion event, suggesting that the phenomenon occurred throughout the Solar System and was related to planet formation.

    • James M. D. Day
    • , Richard J. Walker
    •  & Douglas Rumble III

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