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Research Highlight |
Volcano lurking under Pacific’s surface has an explosive past
A distinctive rock layer on two Japanese islands is traced to an underwater volcano’s violent eruption some 13,500 years ago.
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News |
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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Where I Work |
Plumbing the depths of Costa Rica’s volcanoes
Volcanologist Maarten de Moor helps to warn local people of looming eruptions.
- Jack Leeming
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Article |
Hadean isotopic fractionation of xenon retained in deep silicates
An explanation of the Earth’s ‘missing Xe’ problem that involves multiple magma ocean stages combined with atmospheric loss is proposed.
- Igor Rzeplinski
- , Chrystèle Sanloup
- & Denis Horlait
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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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News |
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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Article |
Topography of mountain belts controlled by rheology and surface processes
Using the new Beaumont number presented, it is concluded that the topographic evolution of collisional mountain belts is determined by the combination of plate velocity, crustal rheology and surface process efficiency.
- Sebastian G. Wolf
- , Ritske S. Huismans
- & Xiaoping Yuan
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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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Where I Work |
A down-to-earth approach to climate change
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe researches how physical changes to soil affect how much carbon is released into the atmosphere.
- Virginia Gewin
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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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Article
| Open AccessInstantaneous 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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News & Views |
From the archive: the link between mosquitoes and disease, and Mount Vesuvius erupts
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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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 Highlight |
Global cities are sinking — and humans are partly to blame
Some coastal cities are subsiding by dozens of millimetres per year, making them even more vulnerable to sea-level rise triggered by climate change.
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Article |
Assembly of the basal mantle structure beneath Africa
Reconstruction of one billion years of mantle flow shows that mobile basal mantle structures are just as consistent with the Earth’s volcanic history as are fixed mantle structures.
- Nicolas Flament
- , Ömer F. Bodur
- & Andrew S. Merdith
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News & Views |
Mobile mantle could explain volcanic hotspot locations
Ancient records of Earth’s magnetic field seem to contradict a conceptual picture of how regions of volcanic activity form. Statistical modelling now reconciles these data with our understanding of mantle fluid dynamics.
- Allen K. McNamara
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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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News |
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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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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News |
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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Nature Podcast |
Tongan volcano eruption leaves scientists with unanswered questions
Scientists scramble to understand the devastating Tongan volcano eruption, and modelling how societal changes might alter carbon emissions.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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Research Highlight |
How a space rock became King Tut’s dagger
An X-ray scan helps to show how the pharaoh’s knife was forged — and suggests a prestigious pedigree.
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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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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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Matters Arising |
Reply to: Rainfall an unlikely factor in Kīlauea’s 2018 rift eruption
- Jamie I. Farquharson
- & Falk Amelung
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Matters Arising |
Rainfall an unlikely factor in Kīlauea’s 2018 rift eruption
- Michael P. Poland
- , Shaul Hurwitz
- & Christina A. Neal
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Research Highlight |
Vesuvius is off the hook for ancient Arctic ashfall
Volcanic debris in a Greenland ice-core layer probably came from an Alaskan volcano instead.
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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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Article
| Open AccessAge of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Africa
Geochemical analyses correlating the stratum that overlies the sediments containing the Omo fossils with material from a volcanic eruption suggest that these fossils (the oldest known modern human fossils in eastern Africa) are over 200,000 years old.
- Céline M. Vidal
- , Christine S. Lane
- & Clive Oppenheimer
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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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Research Highlight |
The tricky ‘hotspot’ volcanoes that belie the name
Seismic waves reveal unexpectedly cool temperatures for certain volcanoes classified as hot.
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Article
| Open AccessDepressed 660-km discontinuity caused by akimotoite–bridgmanite transition
X-ray diffraction experiments indicate that the depression of the Earth’s 660-kilometre seismic discontinuity beneath cold subduction zones is caused by a phase transition from akimotoite to bridgmanite, leading to slab stagnation.
- Artem Chanyshev
- , Takayuki Ishii
- & Tomoo Katsura
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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 & Views |
Gravity, AlphaFold and neural interfaces: a year of remarkable science
Highlights from News & Views published this year.
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Article |
A large West Antarctic Ice Sheet explains early Neogene sea-level amplitude
Variations in Miocene sea level can be explained by a large marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
- J. W. Marschalek
- , L. Zurli
- & Zhifang Xiong
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Article |
Deep-mantle krypton reveals Earth’s early accretion of carbonaceous matter
The krypton isotopic pattern of Earth’s deep mantle indicates that volatile-rich material from the outer Solar System was delivered early in Earth’s accretion history.
- Sandrine Péron
- , Sujoy Mukhopadhyay
- & David W. Graham
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Book Review |
The loss of the world’s frozen places
Two very different books explore the past, present and future of glaciers.
- Alexandra Witze
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News & Views |
Robotic sample return reveals lunar secrets
A mission to unexplored lunar territory has returned the youngest volcanic samples collected so far. The rocks highlight the need to make revisions to models of the thermal evolution of the Moon.
- Richard W. Carlson
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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 Round-Up |
New mineral, FDA chief and the pandemic’s toll on research
The latest science news, in brief.
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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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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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