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Four years ago, a volcano opened this massive crack between the African and Arabian tectonic plates in Ethopia. New research shows it could be the beginning of a new ocean shoreline. More »
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You're looking at the Afar Depression in Ethiopia, a 12-foot-wide hot springs that exists at the junction of three massive tectonic plates. It also sits on top of a volcano. More »
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Dozens of nearly-imperceptible mini-earthquakes have made Yellowstone National Park tremble over the past few days - they might be early warning of an eruption so huge it buries half the U.S. under hot ash. More »
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It's one thing to see pictures of Greenland's ice sheets growing cracks and slowly crumbling into the water. But the whole process takes on a visceral, terrifying quality when you watch the two movies we've got for you below the jump: One is the result of a researcher recording a glacier breakup, then speeding up the tape to make the sound audible. The result is the truest form of black metal I've ever heard. The second clip shows a tsunami caused when a chunk of Greenland's ice sheet plunges into the water. More »
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Known for spewing liquid rock, ash clouds, and noxious gases into the atmosphere, volcanoes seem unlikely candidates for solving Global Warming. But the rocks the fiery mountains leave behind may be exactly that, according to scientists at Columbia University. They say that sequestering carbon dioxide in volcanic rocks beneath the ocean may be the best way yet to socking the CO2 away, out of the atmosphere, and making sure it never haunts us again. More »
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This Friday sees the release of Journey to the Center of the Earth, the second major film adaptation of Jules Verne's groundbreaking 1864 novel. While director Eric Brevig's sweet 3D imagery depicts the Earth's core as a biosphere in a bubble of lava, the real center of the Earth might be even more fascinating. We've hit the geophysics books and brought back for you . . . a realistic journey to the center of the Earth, and the burning gravitational well you'd really find there. More »
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It sounds like voodoo, but NASA researcher Friedemann Freund is so convinced he's discovered the secret to predicting earthquakes that he's put up $1 million dollars of his own money to fly a group of satellites into Earth orbit to test his theory. The instruments could be up in as little as two years, looking for small electrical charges that build up as rocks in the planet's crust get strained by the massive forces of plate tectonics. Of course there are a lot of dissenters to Freund's theory, but according to an internal memo leaked to the press in May, other NASA scientists are planning to tell the world later this summer that the idea works. More »
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Forget the ozone layer, global warming, and all of the other things environmentalists whine about: the one thing holding life together here on Earth is its powerful magnetic field. And for the past 150 years that humans have been measuring it, our only line of defense against deadly cosmic and solar radiation has been mysteriously weakening. Now, new research says the situation is even more dire than we thought. Looking back 2,000 years into the past, geophysicists have calculated that the field's been weakening the entire time, and that we've got about 500 years to go before it's gone entirely. More »
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Nothing says "massive destructive force" like the rocks exhumed from two kilometers down in the earthquake-causing San Andreas Fault. Mangled and twisted by the fault's awesome power, these rocks help you understand why a flick of this fault's little finger is enough to flatten entire cities. And now you can see them up close, with a new Google Earth mashup that lets you get personal with boulders that were drilled as part of the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) project. More »
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A crater on the ever-active Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii has started to spew a huge plume of ash. The recent explosion, which shut down roads in the area, may be a harbinger of even bigger explosions to come. Above, you can see what happened a few years ago when things got explodey on Kilauea. We've got pictures of the new ash plume, plus more Kilauea lava love below. More »
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