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mega geophysics
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geophysics
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mega geophysics
mega geophysics
Journey to the REAL Center of the Earth
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 »
mad geophysics
Are Mercury's Days as a Planet Numbered?
Ever since the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto to a dwarf planet (does it even deserve a capital "P"???) in 2006, astronomers around the world have been at odds to describe just what they mean when they say the word "planet." For the moment, the solar system is holding steady with eight of them, but late last week evidence returned from the Mercury MESSENGER mission showed that the smallest planet left is shrinking. One has to wonder: how long will it be before Mercury gets plutoed? More »
space
New Satellites Will Predict Earthquakes
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 »
mega geophysics
Is Earth's Magnetic Field Failing Us?
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 »
mega geophysics
View the Seeds of our Destruction in a Google Earth Mashup
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 »
mega geophysics
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.
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Kilauea Volcano Restarts Its Fires, Spews Strange New Ash
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 »
disaster
Mount St Helens, a volcano long believed to be dormant in Washington State in the U.S., freaked people out back in 1980 when it suddenly erupted and spewed tons of lava and boiling mud into the air (as you can see in this picture). It calmed down for a few years, but in 2004 it started slowly erupting, and has been oozing sticky clumps of lava continuously since then. As it erupts, it also unleashes constant small earthquakes in the areas nearby. Now a Michigan Tech researcher has braved the lava-slicked slopes of Mount St Helens do do some of the most detailed seismic research on the volcano ever. And he thinks he knows what's causing all the shakes.
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Why Mount St. Helens Has Been Erupting Continuously for Four Years
Mount St Helens, a volcano long believed to be dormant in Washington State in the U.S., freaked people out back in 1980 when it suddenly erupted and spewed tons of lava and boiling mud into the air (as you can see in this picture). It calmed down for a few years, but in 2004 it started slowly erupting, and has been oozing sticky clumps of lava continuously since then. As it erupts, it also unleashes constant small earthquakes in the areas nearby. Now a Michigan Tech researcher has braved the lava-slicked slopes of Mount St Helens do do some of the most detailed seismic research on the volcano ever. And he thinks he knows what's causing all the shakes.
More »
atmosphere porn
It looks like somebody photoshopped the Canadian prairies inside the red gasses of Jupiter, but this is an actual picture, untouched, of Earth. It's a "shelf cloud" lit up by early-morning light. Photographed from the Trans-Canada highway in Saskatchewan, this shelf cloud was most likely the bleeding edge of a storm.
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A Red Storm Boils over the Jovian Prairie
It looks like somebody photoshopped the Canadian prairies inside the red gasses of Jupiter, but this is an actual picture, untouched, of Earth. It's a "shelf cloud" lit up by early-morning light. Photographed from the Trans-Canada highway in Saskatchewan, this shelf cloud was most likely the bleeding edge of a storm.
More »
Artic Ice Will Melt Entirely in Summer 2013
BBC News is reporting on a disturbing study presented this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting that shows the polar ice sheet is melting more quickly than anyone imagined. This past summer, the sheet retreated to a size of 4.13 million sq kilometers, the smallest in recorded history. You can see a flash animation of the ice cap's size over the past 27 years with the BBC story. The scientists who worked on the study say this new data means the ice cap might melt entirely by summer 2013. [BBC News]
BBC News is reporting on a disturbing study presented this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting that shows the polar ice sheet is melting more quickly than anyone imagined. This past summer, the sheet retreated to a size of 4.13 million sq kilometers, the smallest in recorded history. You can see a flash animation of the ice cap's size over the past 27 years with the BBC story. The scientists who worked on the study say this new data means the ice cap might melt entirely by summer 2013. [BBC News]
