Freund's theory has been around for years, and it basically goes like this: when squeezed, rocks turn into big batteries. Oxygen molecules in the rocks undergo chemical reactions, which builds up a positive electrical charge. When a big enough section of rock is under a lot of stress, the charge becomes strong enough to cause a disturbance in the planet's ionosphere.

Satellites orbiting in the ionosphere should be able to detect those changes (they may even mess with GPS satellites a bit), and one report says they already have:

Other proponents [of the prediction theory] expect new research confirming their theory will appear later this summer, based on a leaked memo written by Dimitar Ouzounov, a NASA-funded researcher at George Mason University.

On May 2, 2008, Ouzounov was looking for these same infrared light sources and found one over Sichuan province. Ouzounov sent a memo to colleagues reporting his finding, which he said was later leaked to the press.

On May 12 a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the Chinese province, killing thousands.

If this proves to be true, it's the holy grail of earthquake research. Imagine being able to predict quakes better than any other natural disaster (when was the last time someone accurately predicted where a hurricane would strike ten days in advance?).

But there are still two big red flags here: 1) if this is so awesome, why isn't NASA falling all over itself to get Freund's satellites in orbit? 2) if Freund has ponied up $1 million in personal cash to see this project through, he's probably going to want to make his money back. Fair enough, but things could get ugly if he builds one of the most potent life-saving technologies ever invented, but holds the information for ransom, charging world governments a subscription fee to protect their citizens from disaster.

Source: Discovery News

The Sun is obviously the biggest reason we're alive today — without it Earth would be a lifeless, frozen lump of rock at best. The same is probably true of the oceans, Earth's distance from the Sun, and so on. But Earth's magnetic field doesn't get enough credit (apart from a few terrible movies like "The Core") as being just as important as any of those ingredients for keeping life on Earth. Without it, highly energetic particles from the Sun would fry life, shatter life-giving molecules floating in the air and water, and strip away most of our atmosphere (witness Mars, whose thin atmosphere has been ravaged by solar winds).

In just a few centuries that may be a reality. Even if the field doesn't disappear entirely, in a weakened state it could let enough radiation in to cook the vast communications networks and power girds that have sprung up around the planet in the last century. But searching through ancient copper mines in Israel and Jordan has turned up some interesting new evidence. By looking at layers of metal slag that aligned themselves based on the magnetic field that was present as they cooled thousands of years ago, scientists at Scripps Institute of Oceanography and UC San Diego have managed to reconstruct the field's strength. What they found was startling: about 2,000 years ago Earth's magnetic field peaked in strength, and it's been weakening ever since.

The field itself isn't going away any time soon — it's powered by oceans of molten metal churning at the center of the planet — but for reasons we don't quite understand, every quarter million years or so it reverses polarity. Each time it does this, there's a period of a few days to a few hundred years where the field becomes so weak that it's almost non-existent, and that's what we seem to be heading for.

What does this mean for life on Earth? Bottom line is we don't know. Some scientists have argued that mass extinctions line up with field reversals in Earth's past, while others say that when the field flips it flips too fast — maybe over the course of a week or less — to do anything more than cause a glitch in your cell phone reception.
The one thing we can take comfort in is that the decline has so far been slow and steady, so humans alive today probably won't have to worry much.

But our fuzzy understanding from the geologic past suggests that as the field weakens further, it's polarity can wander all over the place, flopping back and forth like a fish out of water. If that's true, in a couple of generations global warming from CO2 in the atmosphere might be the least of our worries.

Source: Scripps Institute of Oceanography

As you scan through the data (Hole G, section 8 is where the action is, really), you can almost imagine running your fingers along the fault. The images are side-by-side photos, taken from opposite sides of the drill cores. Admittedly, they're not as sexy as a lot of the eye candy we usually link to. But they're beautiful in the same way images of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slamming into Jupiter in 1994 were beautiful. Looking at them, it's hard to ignore that little voice inside saying "wow, that could happen to us."

Source: Earthscope.org via Discovery News

Above is a picture taken a few days ago of the ash plume. According to PhysOrg:

The ash plume, which is thousands of feet high, indicates an unknown geophysical change deep inside the volcano. Scientists also said small amounts of lava erupted from the crater Monday.

The National Park Service has closed Crater Rim Drive through the south caldera area until further notice, and people with asthma and other breathing problems were told to avoid downwind areas. USGS said the possibility of future small explosions from Halemaumau Crater cannot be ruled out.

Kilauea Spews Ash [PhysOrg]