We undertook a 28-day voyage to explore a possible lost continent in a remote part of the Coral Sea, in an area off the coast of Queensland. Here’s what we found.
Exploration of ancient magma chambers in fossil volcanoes has the potential to provide new sources of metals that will facilitate environmentally friendly technologies.
Rocks contain a layer-by-layer record of the history of our planet.
Fred Moore/flickr
Even in this fantasy world, geological processes like tectonic plate movement, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions would have built the mountains, carved the rivers, and created vast oceans.
Photographed on Kangaroo Island, this rock – called a ‘zebra schist’ – deformed from flat-lying marine sediments through being stressed by a continental collision over 500 million years ago.
Dietmar Muller
Giant forces slowly move continents across a viscous layer of the Earth, like biscuits gliding over a warm toffee ocean. This stresses the continents, and twists and contorts the crust.
Setting the scene for ancient Silk Road trading and now China’s Belt and Road initiative, the Tianshan has changed humanity. Geological evidence shows us how this incredible mountain range formed.
Melbourne lies at the eastern end of a volcanic province, but when’s it going to blow? Understanding the geology of Melbourne and comparing it to Hawaii is really helpful in calculating risk.
Feeling blue? An Oppenheimer Blue diamond of 14.62 carats.
EPA/AAP
Some diamonds come from depths of more than 650km. Tiny imperfections in these gems give us clues about what’s happening in Earth’s hidden geological layers.
Shallow but powerful earthquakes on Lombok have resulted in around 100 deaths and destroyed buildings.
EPA/AAP
Caught in the middle: Lombok and Bali are exposed to earthquake and tsunamis risk due to a tectonic plate boundary to the south, but also a unique zone of activity that thrusts to the north.
What’s going on 150 kilometers below the Earth’s surface?
Good Free Photos
A new array of seismometers provides a glimpse of what’s happening deep beneath this geologic fault. New data help explain why the north and south of the region are more seismically active than the middle.
Lifeguards and volunteers run across an ash covered slope after the June 3 eruption of the Fuego volcano in Guatemala.
Esteban Biba/AAP
Important points about volcanoes: location matters, explosiveness can be predicted to an extent, and fast-moving flows of volcanic materials (known as pyroclastic flows) are deadly.
InSight aims to figure out just how tectonically active Mars is, and how often meteorites impact it.
NASA
What is Mars made of? We hear from a scientist who will be part of the team analysing ‘marsquake’ seismic data and orbital imagery from the InSight mission to the red planet.
Seismic shockwaves after a meteorite’s collision could affect systems all over the planet.
solarseven/Shutterstock.com
Research suggests a new threat to life on Earth from the meteorite’s crash: Via seismic waves, the impact triggered massive undersea eruptions, as big as any ever seen in our planet’s history.
Earthquake survivors are living in tents in western Iran.
AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
The Nov. 12 earthquake wasn’t centered on any known major faults in the Earth’s crust. In its wake, scientists will collect data to add detail to what they know about seismic activity in the area.
A detection station for seismic activity at Bilibion, a remote corner of Russia.
The Official CTBTO Photostream (Copyright CTBTO Preparatory Commission)
Human-induced earthquakes have been reported from every continent except Antarctica. We asked a geologist to investigate whether North Korea’s nuclear tests could trigger geological changes.
The new map was created using data from rocks found in locations including Madagascar.
Alan Collins
You would not recognise Earth if you saw it 500 million years ago - the lands, oceans, climate and life were all very different. Scientists now have a new map of the deep history of Earth.