News Feature |
Featured
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Article |
The lithospheric-to-lower-mantle carbon cycle recorded in superdeep diamonds
Oxygen isotope measurements of mineral inclusions in superdeep diamonds indicate that carbonated igneous oceanic crust is the primary carbon-bearing reservoir in slabs subducted to deep-lithospheric and transition-zone depths.
- M. E. Regier
- , D. G. Pearson
- & J. W. Harris
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Research Highlight |
The violent blasts that can add to an avalanche’s devastation
Scientists zero in on the factors that heighten the chance of ‘airblasts’ after a slope collapses.
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Career News |
US geoscience programmes drop controversial admissions test
A standardized exam is under fire amid claims that it perpetuates bias and exclusion.
- Virginia Gewin
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Research Highlight |
Our planet’s heart is watery
The core might contain Earth’s biggest reservoir as a result of hydrogen moving into the early planet’s centre.
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News Feature |
The new science of volcanoes harnesses AI, satellites and gas sensors to forecast eruptions
Forty years after the Mount St Helens eruption galvanized volcano researchers, they are using powerful new tools to spy on the world’s most dangerous mountains.
- Jane Palmer
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Comment |
Store and share ancient rocks
Geological samples must be archived for all if we are to solve the riddles of Earth’s complex history.
- Noah Planavsky
- , Ashleigh Hood
- & Kirk Johnson
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Research Highlight |
The killer asteroid that unleashed a giant dust cloud across the globe
Modelling finally explains how debris from a space rock’s impact travelled around the world.
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Research Highlight |
Sandy beaches are endangered worldwide as the climate changes
Sea-level rise and coastal shifts could wipe out nearly half of Earth’s sandy seashores by the end of the century.
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News |
New Antarctic island spotted as mammoth glacier retreats
An uncharted island off Antarctica’s western coast could reveal how climate change is altering the continent.
- Giuliana Viglione
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Research Highlight |
The Australian outback hosts the world’s oldest meteorite crater
Collision with a huge object more than 2 billion years ago might even have altered the planet’s climate.
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Book Review |
A heliocentric epic, volcanic viniculture, and cartoon chemistry: Books in brief
Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week’s best science picks.
- Barbara Kiser
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News |
Greenland rocks suggest Earth’s magnetic field is older than we thought
Analysis finds that the planet’s protective shield was in place by at least 3.7 billion years ago, as early life arose.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
Two of the biggest US earthquake faults might be linked
Provocative analysis of sea-floor cores suggests that quakes on the Cascadia fault off California can trigger tremors on the San Andreas.
- Alexandra Witze
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News Feature |
Did a million years of rain jump-start dinosaur evolution?
An extended bout of warm wet weather 232 million years ago may have profoundly altered life on Earth.
- Michael Marshall
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Research Highlight |
Tsunami sands reveal massive quakes in Japan’s past
Great earthquakes have roiled a central region of Japan a number of times during the past two millennia.
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Research Highlight |
A lethal avalanche’s fury is captured in unprecedented detail
Waterlogged ground contributed to the gargantuan debris flow in the Swiss Alps.
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News |
Earth scientists push ambitious project to map Canada’s geology
A fleet of geophysical observatories would probe everything from the inner Earth to the upper atmosphere.
- Alexandra Witze
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Research Highlight |
Catastrophic landslides had a surprising cause: rice farming
Crop irrigation saturated soil, helping to set off Indonesian slides that killed thousands of people.
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News & Views |
Enigmatic origin of diamond-bearing rocks revealed
Kimberlites are volcanic rocks that derive from deep in Earth’s mantle, but the nature of their source is uncertain. A study of this source’s evolution over two billion years provides valuable information about its properties.
- Catherine Chauvel
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Letter |
Kimberlites reveal 2.5-billion-year evolution of a deep, isolated mantle reservoir
Globally distributed kimberlites have their origins in a single, homogeneous early Earth reservoir that was subsequently perturbed, probably by subduction along the margins of Pangaea, around 200 million years ago.
- Jon Woodhead
- , Janet Hergt
- & Geoff Nowell
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News |
Ocean drilling revolutionized Earth science — now geologists want to plumb new depths
International panel lays out an ambitious vision of exploring the planet through to 2050.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
Geologist’s sacking prompts outcry
Researchers say that Irina Artemieva’s dismissal from the University of Copenhagen runs counter to international academic standards.
- Quirin Schiermeier
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Nature Podcast |
Podcast: A mindset for success, and mercury in fish
Listen to the latest science news, with Noah Baker and Nick Howe.
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Letter |
Metamorphism and the evolution of plate tectonics
Variability in Earth’s thermal gradients, recorded by metamorphic rocks through time, shows that Earth’s modern plate tectonics developed gradually since the Neoarchaean era, three billion years ago.
- Robert M. Holder
- , Daniel R. Viete
- & Tim E. Johnson
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Letter |
Deep roots for mid-ocean-ridge volcanoes revealed by plagioclase-hosted melt inclusions
Volatile contents of plagioclase-hosted melt inclusions from volcanoes at the Gakkel mid-ocean ridge suggest that magmatic crystallization extends to depths of 16 kilometres, much deeper than suggested by olivine-hosted melt inclusions.
- Emma N. Bennett
- , Frances E. Jenner
- & C. Johan Lissenberg
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News Feature |
Humans versus Earth: the quest to define the Anthropocene
Researchers are hunting for nuclear debris, mercury pollution and other fingerprints of humanity that could designate a new geological epoch.
- Meera Subramanian
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News |
India’s geologists champion law to protect fossil treasures
Scientists estimate that several hundred geological sites are threatened by the prospect of vandalism or development.
- Priyanka Pulla
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Editorial |
Write rules for deep-sea mining before it’s too late
The International Seabed Authority must commit the mining industry to a sustainable future.
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Books & Arts |
Leonardo da Vinci’s laboratory: studies in flow
On the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance icon’s death, Martin Kemp looks anew at his innovative experimental models for the motion of water and blood.
- Martin Kemp
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Books & Arts |
An ode to carbon
Ted Nield mulls over an ambitious opus on the sixth element.
- Ted Nield
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Matters Arising |
Reply to: Evidence for two blue (type IIb) diamond populations
- Evan M. Smith
- , Steven B. Shirey
- & Wuyi Wang
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Research Highlight |
A 70-million-year-old landscape that looks frozen in time
Brazilian mountains haven’t eroded and could be the oldest surface land on Earth.
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News & Views |
Role of major erosion events in Earth’s dynamics
A study provides evidence for the unconventional idea that the advent and evolution of plate tectonics on Earth were related to the rise of continents and to sediment accumulation at continental edges and in trenches.
- Whitney Behr
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News Feature |
Venus is Earth’s evil twin — and space agencies can no longer resist its pull
Once a water-rich Eden, the hellish planet could reveal how to find habitable worlds around distant stars.
- Shannon Hall
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News |
Japanese drill ship fails to reach the earthquake-generating zone
Chikyu drilled deeper into the seafloor than ever before, but could not reach point where tectonic plates meet.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
Anthropocene now: influential panel votes to recognize Earth’s new epoch
‘Atomic Age’ would mark the start of the current geologic time unit, if proposal receives final approval.
- Meera Subramanian
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News |
Mystery of deadly Indonesian tsunami cracked using social-media videos
The findings expose the deficiencies of tsunami warning systems, as well as highlighting the power of citizen science.
- Michael Marshall
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News |
Deadly Japanese earthquake study retracted over false data
The paper is the third study about the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake to be retracted.
- Mark Zastrow
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Research Highlight |
Mystery eruption traced to dangerous Italian volcano
Some 29,000 years ago, the Campi Flegrei system near modern Naples buried an entire region in ash.
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Nature Video |
The secret of volcanic flows’ deadly speed
Hot mixture of rock and ash slides on thin layer of air.
- Shamini Bundell
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Books & Arts |
Curating the cosmos: a lens on nature
Amelia Hennighausen extols a tome on how ever-evolving photography has captured the glory of scientific phenomena.
- Amelia Hennighausen
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News |
How AI and satellites could help predict volcanic eruptions
Emerging monitoring methods will allow scientists to keep an eye on many more volcanoes.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
Chinese crew extract first rock from beneath East Antarctic ice in 60 years
The experiment is a test for a plan to extract rock from a buried mountain range.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
Quake-prone Myanmar leads the way in seismic monitoring
The fledgling democracy is opening up to the world – leading to a transformation in how it monitors earthquakes.
- Alexandra Witze
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Books & Arts |
Human evolution’s ties to tectonics
Kevin Padian applauds a book on the planet’s role in our biological and cultural development.
- Kevin Padian
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Article |
Southward propagation of Nazca subduction along the Andes
The current phase of subduction of the Nazca slab was established in the Peruvian Andes after a plate reorganization around 80 million years ago and then propagated progressively southwards.
- Yi-Wei Chen
- , Jonny Wu
- & John Suppe
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News |
EXCLUSIVE: Tiny animal carcasses found in buried Antarctic lake
The surprise discovery of ancient crustaceans and a tardigrade emerged from a rare mission to drill into a lake sealed off by a kilometre of ice.
- Douglas Fox
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News |
Earthquake-risk maps pinpoint world’s most vulnerable areas
Indonesia and India are among the countries with the most people at risk.
- Alexandra Witze