Featured
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Article
| Open Access
Seismological evidence for a multifault network at the subduction interface
Using observations of double-difference relocated earthquakes in a local three-dimensional velocity model for Ecuador, a detailed image of seismicity is created, forming the base for more realistic models of earthquake rupture, slip and hazard in subduction zones.
- Caroline Chalumeau
- , Hans Agurto-Detzel
- & Audrey Galve
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News |
Taiwan hit by biggest earthquake in 25 years: why scientists weren’t surprised
A complex network of faults lies in the area that experienced the earthquake, and more shocks are expected.
- Gemma Conroy
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News & Views Forum |
Melting ice solves leap-second problem — for now
Humans’ effect on the polar ice sheets is slowing Earth’s rotation, posing challenges for its alignment with the official time standard. Two researchers discuss the science behind the slowdown and the impact it has on timekeeping.
- Patrizia Tavella
- & Jerry X. Mitrovica
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News |
Climate change has slowed Earth’s rotation — and could affect how we keep time
The effect of melting polar ice could delay the need for a ‘leap second’ by three years.
- Elizabeth Gibney
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Article |
A global timekeeping problem postponed by global warming
Increased melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica, measured by satellite gravity, has decreased the angular velocity of Earth more rapidly than before and has already affected global timekeeping.
- Duncan Carr Agnew
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Article
| Open Access
Disappearing cities on US coasts
High-resolution vertical land motion and elevation datasets combined with projections of sea-level rise of 32 major US coastal cities shows that a considerable amount of land area, population, and properties are threatened by relative sea-level rise by 2050.
- Leonard O. Ohenhen
- , Manoochehr Shirzaei
- & Robert J. Nicholls
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Article |
East-to-west human dispersal into Europe 1.4 million years ago
Burial-dating methods using cosmogenic nuclides indicate that the oldest stone tools at Korolevo archaeological site in western Ukraine date to around 1.4 million years ago, providing evidence of early human dispersal into Europe from the east.
- R. Garba
- , V. Usyk
- & J. D. Jansen
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News |
Korean lunar mission provides a view into the Moon’s dark spaces
South Korea’s first trip to the Moon has been labelled a success.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
Strange blobs in Earth’s mantle are relics of a massive collision
Impact with a body called Theia 4.5 billion years ago left remnants deep inside Earth — and also created the Moon.
- Anil Oza
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Article |
Moon-forming impactor as a source of Earth’s basal mantle anomalies
Computer simulations show that mantle material from Theia, a proto-planet theorized to have struck the proto-Earth in the Moon-forming giant impact, may be the source of Earth’s basal mantle anomalies.
- Qian Yuan
- , Mingming Li
- & Paul D. Asimow
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News & Views |
Deep Mars is surprisingly soft
Two analyses of seismic waves that traversed Mars paint the clearest picture yet of the red planet’s core and deep mantle — and rationalize the puzzling implications of a previous interpretation of the seismological data.
- Suzan van der Lee
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Article
| Open Access
Evidence for a liquid silicate layer atop the Martian core
Using multiply diffracted P waves and first-principles computations of the thermoelastic properties of liquid iron-rich alloys, we show that the core of Mars is smaller and denser than previously thought.
- A. Khan
- , D. Huang
- & M. Murakami
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Article
| Open Access
Geophysical evidence for an enriched molten silicate layer above Mars’s core
We provide observational evidence that suggests the presence of a molten silicate layer above the core of Mars, which is overlain by a partially molten layer, indicating that the core of Mars is smaller than previously thought.
- Henri Samuel
- , Mélanie Drilleau
- & William B. Banerdt
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Obituary |
W. Jason Morgan, discoverer of plate tectonics (1935–2023)
Geophysicist who showed how segments of Earth’s crust move.
- Lawrence M. Cathles
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News Explainer |
Why was the Morocco earthquake so deadly?
The quake, which has killed thousands, was unusually large for Morocco and struck a region where most buildings are not earthquake-resilient.
- Michael Marshall
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News Explainer |
India’s Moon mission: four things Chandrayaan-3 has taught scientists
In just two weeks, the Indian mission has made some surprising discoveries about the composition of the Moon
- T.V. Padma
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Research Highlight |
Tiny bubbles make massive glaciers fade away faster
Air pockets trapped between ice crystals are an underappreciated factor in the melting at the glacier–ocean boundary.
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Article
| Open Access
Identifying attacks in the Russia–Ukraine conflict using seismic array data
Analysis of seismic waves caused by explosions in northern Ukraine recorded by a local network in 2022 demonstrated the ability to automatically identify individual attacks during the Russia–Ukraine conflict in close to real time.
- Ben D. E. Dando
- , Bettina P. Goertz-Allmann
- & Alexander Liashchuk
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Article |
The break of earthquake asperities imaged by distributed acoustic sensing
Distributed acoustic sensing technology is utilized to image four high-frequency rupture subevents of the 2021 Antelope Valley, California, earthquake; the results indicate that the subevents are due to the breaking of fault asperities.
- Jiaxuan Li
- , Taeho Kim
- & Zhongwen Zhan
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Article |
Remote detection of a lunar granitic batholith at Compton–Belkovich
Measurements from the Chang’e-1 and Chang’e-2 microwave instruments reveal an anomalously hot geothermal source on the Moon that is best explained by a roughly 50-kilometre-diameter granitic system below the geological feature known as Compton–Belkovich.
- Matthew A. Siegler
- , Jianqing Feng
- & Mackenzie N. White
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Article
| Open Access
Variation in bridgmanite grain size accounts for the mid-mantle viscosity jump
Bridgmanite-enriched rocks in the deep lower mantle of Earth have a larger grain size and higher viscosity than those of the overlying pyrolitic rocks, which explain the mid-mantle viscosity jump.
- Hongzhan Fei
- , Maxim D. Ballmer
- & Tomoo Katsura
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News |
Rampant groundwater pumping has changed the tilt of Earth’s axis
Human depletion of underground reservoirs has shifted the global distribution of water so much that the North Pole has drifted by more than 4 centimetres per year.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Article |
Major southern San Andreas earthquakes modulated by lake-filling events
Analysis of new geologic and palaeoseismic data using a 3D finite-element model suggests that the past six major earthquakes on the southern San Andreas Fault were probably triggered by highstands of ancient Lake Cahuilla.
- Ryley G. Hill
- , Matthew Weingarten
- & Yuri Fialko
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Article |
Dynamics, interactions and delays of the 2019 Ridgecrest rupture sequence
Data-assimilated three-dimensional dynamic rupture models of the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence in California are used to reveal the dynamics, interactions and delays of the earthquake sequence.
- Taufiq Taufiqurrahman
- , Alice-Agnes Gabriel
- & František Gallovič
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Nature Podcast |
Audio long read: What Turkey’s earthquake tells us about the science of seismic forecasting
Despite decades of research, predicting exactly where an earthquake will strike remains practically impossible.
- Shannon Hall
- & Benjamin Thompson
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News Feature |
What Turkey’s earthquake tells us about the science of seismic forecasting
Geologists knew decades ago that a quake would strike southeastern Turkey, but precise prediction is still the stuff of science fiction.
- Shannon Hall
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News |
Secrets of Earth’s inner core revealed by large quakes
Seismic waves travel differently through innermost core than through outer section.
- Bianca Nogrady
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Article |
Weak upper-mantle base revealed by postseismic deformation of a deep earthquake
The Earth’s mantle viscosity is studied following a deep earthquake located near the bottom of the upper mantle, and a weak layer is detected that is consequential to the understanding of mantle dynamics.
- Sunyoung Park
- , Jean-Philippe Avouac
- & Adriano Gualandi
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News |
Scientists made a new kind of ice that might exist on distant moons
The 'amorphous' solid is denser and could be water ‘frozen in time’.
- Jonathan O'Callaghan
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News |
Has Earth’s inner core stopped its strange spin?
Earthquake data hint that the inner core stopped rotating faster than the rest of the planet in 2009, but not all researchers agree.
- Alexandra Witze
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Article |
Anomalous thermal transport under high pressure in boron arsenide
Competition between three- and four-phonon scattering processes is shown to be the source of a unique anomalous thermal conductivity in boron arsenide at high pressures.
- Suixuan Li
- , Zihao Qin
- & Yongjie Hu
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Article
| Open Access
Extensive inland thinning and speed-up of Northeast Greenland Ice Stream
Analysis of global navigation satellite system observations and satellite data shows that frontal changes in 2012 of the North-East Greenland Ice Stream led to speed-up and thinning at least 200 km inland.
- Shfaqat A. Khan
- , Youngmin Choi
- & Anders A. Bjørk
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Article |
Calcium dissolution in bridgmanite in the Earth’s deep mantle
Experiments show that calcium solubility in bridgmanite increases with depth in Earth’s lower mantle, resulting in the disappearance of CaSiO3 perovskite and indicating a transition from a two-perovskite to a single-perovskite domain.
- Byeongkwan Ko
- , Eran Greenberg
- & Sang-Heon Shim
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Comment |
How climate change and unplanned urban sprawl bring more landslides
More settlements will suffer as heavy rains and unregulated construction destabilize slopes in the tropics, models show.
- Ugur Ozturk
- , Elisa Bozzolan
- & Thorsten Wagener
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Career Q&A |
From hydrocarbons to history: building research capacity in Ghana
Cyril Boateng is helping to connect members of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands through geophysics research, using skills he acquired during a PhD and postdoc in China.
- Kendall Powell
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Where I Work |
The gravity of rockfalls
Andrin Caviezel runs alpine experiments to predict the destructive potential of tumbling rocks
- Chris Woolston
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News |
The European space mission that plans to ambush a comet
Comet Interceptor will be first probe to be parked in space waiting for the ideal target — possibly one from outside the Solar System.
- Jonathan O'Callaghan
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Article |
Intermittent lab earthquakes in dynamically weakening fault gouge
Lab experiments show that spontaneously propagating ruptures navigate fault regions through intermittent slip with dramatic friction evolution, providing support that weakening mechanisms may allow ruptures to break through stable faults.
- V. Rubino
- , N. Lapusta
- & A. J. Rosakis
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Article
| Open Access
Instantaneous tracking of earthquake growth with elastogravity signals
A deep learning model trained on prompt elastogravity signal (PEGS) recorded by seismometers in Japan predicts in real time the final magnitude of large earthquakes faster than methods based on elastic waves.
- Andrea Licciardi
- , Quentin Bletery
- & Kévin Juhel
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Article |
A plume origin for hydrous melt at the lithosphere–asthenosphere boundary
By combining experimental constraints on mantle melting with magnetotelluric data, volatile-rich melts emplaced by a mantle plume were shown to be present in the asthenosphere beneath the Cocos Plate.
- Daniel Blatter
- , Samer Naif
- & Anandaroop Ray
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Research Briefing |
Imaging Yellowstone’s plumbing system from the sky
Despite decades of research, the plumbing system that links deep thermal fluids to the well-known surface features of Yellowstone National Park remains mostly unexplored. The first views of this system are revealed through the gathering of airborne geophysical data, which are used to generate electrical resistivity and magnetic susceptibility models.
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Article |
Geophysical imaging of the Yellowstone hydrothermal plumbing system
High-resolution images derived from airborne geophysical data reveal critical aspects of the Yellowstone hydrothermal system, which can be used to assess geochemical models of the evolution of thermal fluids worldwide.
- Carol A. Finn
- , Paul A. Bedrosian
- & Jade Crosbie
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Article |
Weak cubic CaSiO3 perovskite in the Earth’s mantle
At temperatures and pressures typical of the Earth’s lower mantle, cubic CaSiO3 perovskite is found to have lower strength and viscosity compared to bridgmanite and ferropericlase, providing clues to its role in subduction regions.
- J. Immoor
- , L. Miyagi
- & H. Marquardt
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News & Views Forum |
Atomic changes can map subterranean structures
A quantum device uses ultracold atoms to sense gravitational changes that can detect a tunnel under a city street. Here, scientists discuss the advance from the viewpoints of quantum sensing and geophysics.
- Nicola Poli
- , Roman Pašteka
- & Pavol Zahorec
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Article |
Superionic iron alloys and their seismic velocities in Earth’s inner core
Molecular dynamics simulations show that the light elements hydrogen, oxygen and carbon become highly diffusive like liquid in solid iron under the inner-core conditions, leading to a reduction in the seismic velocities.
- Yu He
- , Shichuan Sun
- & Ho-kwang Mao
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News Round-Up |
New mineral, FDA chief and the pandemic’s toll on research
The latest science news, in brief.
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Article |
Dynamic slab segmentation due to brittle–ductile damage in the outer rise
Numerical subduction models used to determine the consequences of bending-induced plate damage show that slab weakening and segmentation can occur at the outer-rise region of the subducting plate.
- T. V. Gerya
- , D. Bercovici
- & T. W. Becker
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News |
China’s Moon trip reveals surprisingly recent volcanic activity
The Chang’e-5 mission returned the first lunar samples since the 1970s, with bits of lava dated at two billion years old.
- Jonathan O'Callaghan
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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
How volcanoes shaped our planet — and why we need to be ready for the next big eruption