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China’s Mars rover finds hints of catastrophic floods
Radar images reveal clues to the history of a largely unexplored region.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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News |
NASA’s Mars rover makes ‘fantastic’ find in search for past life
Perseverance has collected four rock samples from an ancient river delta where organisms might have thrived.
- Alexandra Witze
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Article
| Open AccessRapid shifting of a deep magmatic source at Fagradalsfjall volcano, Iceland
Primitive lavas of the Fagradalsfjall eruption present a window into the deep roots of a magmatic system previously inaccessible to near-real-time investigation, showing that eruptible batches of basaltic magma mix on a timescale of weeks.
- Sæmundur A. Halldórsson
- , Edward W. Marshall
- & Andri Stefánsson
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Where I Work |
Defying ISIS terrorists through research
Abdulrahman Bamerni is working to understand Iraq’s ancient geology to avenge himself against terrorists who put a target on his back on account of his friendships.
- Benjamin Plackett
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News |
Dust-up over dust storm link to ‘Valley Fever’ disease
Researchers are divided over whether rising cases of the fungal infection in the United States can be linked to dust storms.
- Virginia Gewin
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Deadly Afghanistan quake challenges scientists trying to study it
Researchers are relying on limited seismic and satellite information in their efforts to understand the event.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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NASA’s Perseverance rover begins key search for life on Mars
Rolling up an ancient river delta in Jezero Crater, the rover starts crucial rock sampling.
- Alexandra Witze
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Research Highlight |
The surprising locales where rivers are prone to jump their banks
Rivers that change course, sometimes in just a few days, can expose large numbers of people to deadly floods.
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Review Article |
Evolution of Earth’s tectonic carbon conveyor belt
Oceanic plate carbon reservoirs are reconstructed and the fate of subducted carbon is tracked using thermodynamic modelling, challenging previous views and providing boundary conditions for future carbon cycle models.
- R. Dietmar Müller
- , Ben Mather
- & Sabin Zahirovic
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China’s first Moon rocks ignite research bonanza
Samples collected by Chang’e-5 are revealing exciting insights into the Moon’s evolution.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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A year on Mars: How NASA’s Perseverance hit a geological jackpot
The rover collected exciting rock samples on the first leg of its epic journey. Next, it will turn towards an ancient river delta to look for past life.
- Alexandra Witze
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News Feature |
Why the Tongan eruption will go down in the history of volcanology
The 15 January blast sent shock waves around the globe and defied scientific expectations. Researchers are now scrambling to work out why.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
How the Tonga eruption is helping space scientists understand Mars
NASA researchers are studying the unusual explosion of submarine volcano Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai to shed light on landforms on the red planet.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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News |
Tonga volcano eruption created puzzling ripples in Earth’s atmosphere
Powerful waves ringing through the atmosphere after the eruption of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai are unlike anything seen before.
- David Adam
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News Feature |
The devastating mudslides that follow forest fires
Regions that never used to burn are now suffering from forest fires — and that raises the risks of dangerous mudslides that are hard to forecast.
- Jane Palmer
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Correspondence |
Push for ethical practices in geoscience fieldwork
- Giuseppe Di Capua
- , Martin Bohle
- & Simon Schneider
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Nature Video |
Pluto’s mysterious polygons explained
Surface patterns seen by New Horizons mission are driven by sublimation.
- Shamini Bundell
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News |
China’s Mars rover has amassed reams of novel geological data
Data collected by the Tianwen-1 mission and Zhurong Mars rover are offering insights into a previously unexplored region of Mars’s northern hemisphere.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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News |
Diamond delivers long-sought mineral from the deep Earth
Davemaoite is a vehicle for radioactive isotopes that help to heat the planet’s mantle.
- Alexandra Witze
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Nature Video |
Vikings were living in North America exactly a thousand years ago
An animated tale of giant solar storms, ancient sagas and the latest radiocarbon dating technology.
- Shamini Bundell
- & Dan Fox
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Science agency on trial following deadly White Island volcano eruption
The rare example of a government research agency facing criminal charges after a natural disaster underlines the perils of communicating and managing risk.
- Dyani Lewis
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Research Highlight |
The oil-field ‘fugitive’ that can slip into the water supply
Methane gas that steals away from leaky fossil-fuel wells can hide underground and taint groundwater.
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Seed-inspired vehicles and a deadly lake — the week in infographics
Nature highlights three key infographics from the week in science and research.
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News Feature |
How dangerous is Africa’s explosive Lake Kivu?
An unusual lake in central Africa could one day release a vast cloud of greenhouse gases that suffocates millions of people. But it’s not clear whether the threat is getting worse.
- Nicola Jones
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Article |
Three-dimensional magnetic stripes require slow cooling in fast-spread lower ocean crust
A record of Earth’s magnetic field constructed from near-bottom magnetization observations and oriented samples provides three-dimensional imaging of magnetic stripes in fast-spread crust, and suggests slow cooling off-axis, as opposed to deep hydrothermal cooling close to the spreading ridge.
- Sarah M. Maher
- , Jeffrey S. Gee
- & Barbara E. John
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Correspondence |
Anthropocene: event or epoch?
- Andrew M. Bauer
- , Matthew Edgeworth
- & Dorothy J. Merritts
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Nature Podcast |
The billion years missing from Earth’s history
A new theory to explain missing geological time, the end of leaded petrol, and the ancient humans of Arabia.
- Shamini Bundell
- , Dan Fox
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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News |
Success! Mars rover finally collects its first rock core
NASA’s Perseverance rover lives up to its name, drilling and storing Martian rock after a misstep in August.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
Home seismometers provide crucial data on Haiti’s quake
A volunteer network helps to monitor aftershocks and illuminate the country’s earthquake hazards.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
Why NASA’s Mars rover failed to collect its first rock core
Intriguing rocks turned out to be too crumbly for Perseverance to drill successfully. It’s moving on to try elsewhere.
- Alexandra Witze
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Review Article |
Deep continental roots and cratons
Cratons are the oldest parts of the Earth’s continents; this Review concludes that the production of widespread, thick and strong lithosphere via the process of orogenic thickening was fundamental to the eventual emergence of extensive continental landmasses.
- D. Graham Pearson
- , James M. Scott
- & Peter B. Kelemen
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News |
Excitement as Mars rover drills first rock core for return to Earth
The sample collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover might be volcanic, helping scientists to understand the red planet's evolution.
- Alexandra Witze
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Nature Video |
Strange patterns could be the world's oldest animal fossil
Branching patterns could be evidence of an 890-million-year-old sponge, pushing back the earliest animal fossil by 300 million years.
- Nick Petrić Howe
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News |
Sponge-like fossil could be Earth’s earliest known animal
Fossil discovered in northwestern Canada could rewrite the early history of animal life — but some palaeontologists are not convinced it’s real.
- Max Kozlov
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News & Views |
From the archive
Nature’s pages feature a 1971 report of ancient rock carvings indicating astronomical knowledge, and an 1871 look at alpine mountaineering and glaciers.
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News & Views |
Fluid-rich extinct volcanoes cause small earthquakes beneath New Zealand
Imaging of a region where an oceanic tectonic plate descends below another plate reveals evidence that fluid-rich extinct volcanoes can help to lubricate the interface between plates — reducing the potential for large earthquakes.
- Catherine A. Rychert
- & Nicholas Harmon
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Article |
Fluid-rich subducting topography generates anomalous forearc porosity
Electromagnetic data collected at the northern Hikurangi Margin, New Zealand show that a seamount on the incoming plate allows more water to subduct, compared with normal, unfaulted oceanic lithosphere.
- Christine Chesley
- , Samer Naif
- & Dan Bassett
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Where I Work |
Shifting shores: delving into the past with mud cores
Geologist Nicole Khan examines coastal sediment samples to find out how sea levels have changed over the past 1,000 years.
- Amber Dance
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News |
Deadly Myanmar mine disaster caused by poor planning, say data sleuths
First scientific study of Myanmar’s worst mining accident reveals that human error contributed to the 2020 disaster that killed at least 172 people.
- Andrew Silver
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News & Views |
Ancient continental blocks soldered from below
A study of melting in the mantle under northern Canada more than one billion years ago shows that the oldest blocks of continent not only break apart but can also be repaired by the gluing action of major melting episodes.
- Stephen Foley
- & Craig O’Neill
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Research Highlight |
Melting glacier threatens to shove a mighty river off course
Climate change could send Alaska’s Alsek River into a new channel, with potentially far-reaching impacts for humans.
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Article |
Oxygen isotopes trace the origins of Earth’s earliest continental crust
Oxygen isotopes and whole-rock geochemistry show that the water required to make Earth’s first continental crust was primordial and derived from the mantle, not surface water introduced by subduction.
- Robert H. Smithies
- , Yongjun Lu
- & Simon P. Johnson
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News & Views |
Oceanic fault zones reconstructed
Tectonic-plate material is generally thought to be neither created nor destroyed at plate boundaries called oceanic transform faults. An analysis of sea-floor topography suggests that this assumption is incorrect.
- Garrett Ito
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Book Review |
A tour of deep time brings comfort in hard times
A whirlwind geological journey in which the past meets the present and the future.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
The hunt for life on Mars: A visual guide to NASA’s latest mission
The Perseverance spacecraft, due to land this week, aims to scour Jezero Crater and collect the first rocks from the red planet.
- Alexandra Witze
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Article |
Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass
Estimates of global total biomass (the mass of all living things) and anthopogenic mass (the mass embedded in inanimate objects made by humans) over time show that we are roughly at the timepoint when anthropogenic mass exceeds total biomass.
- Emily Elhacham
- , Liad Ben-Uri
- & Ron Milo
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Research Highlight |
How mud volcanoes are born under the sea
Trapped gas causes buried sediments to flow like water, rising and erupting dangerously at the sea floor.
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Nature Podcast |
Audio long-read: The enigmatic organisms of the Ediacaran Period
New fossil finds and new techniques reveal evidence that early animals were more complex than previously thought.
- Traci Watson
- & Benjamin Thompson