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The first emergence and persistence of continental crust on Earth during the Archaean (4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago) has important implications for plate tectonics, ocean chemistry and biological evolution. This happened about a half-billion years earlier than previously thought, according to new research being presented at the EGU General Assembly 2021.Once land becomes established through dynamic processes like plate tectonics, it begins to weather and add crucial minerals and nutrients to the ocean. A record of these nutrients is preserved in the ancient rock record. Previous research used strontium isotopes in marine carbonates, but these rocks are usually...

IN 2013, SCIENTISTS were stunned to find microbes thriving deep inside volcanic rocks beneath the seafloor off the Pacific Northwest, buried under more than 870 feet of sediment. The rocks were on the flank of the volcanic rift where they were born, and they were still young and hot enough to drive intense chemical reactions with the seawater, from which the microbes derived their energy. Now, however, another team of researchers have discovered living cells inside exceedingly old, cold oceanic crust in the middle of the South Pacific. It isn’t yet clear how these new microbes are managing to survive—and...

The southeastern United States has been hit by a series of strange unexplained quakes - most recently, the 2011 magnitude-5.8 earthquake near Mineral, Virginia that shook the nation's capital. Researchers have been baffled, believing the areas should be relatively quiet in terms of seismic activity, as it is located in the interior of the North American Plate, far away from plate boundaries where earthquakes usually occur. Now, they believe the quakes could be caused by pieces of the Earth's mantle breaking off and sinking into the planet.

An international effort to drill into the floor of the Indian Ocean in an effort to reach below the Earth’s crust for the first has come up short. The expedition on the ship, the Joides Resolution, had set out to drill down to 4,265 feet in a stretch of ocean floor off Africa known as the Atlantis Bank gabbroic massif. Gabbro is an intrusive igneous rock that forms when magma is trapped beneath Earth's surface and cools slowly. But the researchers, who had been on the expedition since Nov. 30, were only able to drill down to 2,588 feet, according...

Monday at the White House while hosting a reception to observe LGBT Pride Month, President Barack Obama call his White House Pastry Chef Bill Yosses "the crust master"

The magnitude 7.2 earthquake that gave San Diego County a long, hard shake on Easter Sunday shifted areas of the earth's crust up to 31 inches in Calexico, and by as much as 10 feet near the temblor's epicenter in northern Baja, says data released today by NASA. The Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) data also suggests that there was some surface rupturing along the border of Imperial and San Diego counties, where lots of aftershock activity continues to occur almost three months after the mainshock. The new findings are largely based on an airborne radar mapping program...

... As we have learned, these gases form an invisible barrier that, like a greenhouse's glass ceiling, keeps reflected heat of the sun from escaping our atmosphere. The denser that gaseous barrier grows, the hotter things get and the faster glaciers melt. As they flow off the land, we are warned, seas rise. Yet something else is lately worrying geologists: the likelihood that the Earth's crust, relieved of so much formidable weight of ice borne for many thousands of years, has begun to stretch and rebound.

LONDON (Reuters) - A team of British scientists has set sail on a voyage to examine why a huge chunk of the earth's crust is missing, deep under the Atlantic Ocean -- a phenomenon that challenges conventional ideas about how the earth works. The 20-strong team aims to survey an area some 3,000 to 4,000 metres deep where the mantle -- the deep interior of the earth normally covered by a crust kilometres thick -- is exposed on the sea floor. Experts describe the hole along the mid-Atlantic ridge as an "open wound" on the ocean floor that has puzzled...

Earth's Crust Missing In Mid-Atlantic"Scientists have discovered a large area thousands of square kilometers in extent in the middle of the Atlantic where the Earth’s crust appears to be missing. Instead, the mantle - the deep interior of the Earth, normally covered by crust many kilometers thick - is exposed on the seafloor, 3000m below the surface." Click to Read More About Missing Crust Could the event that caused this huge section of crust to go missing have been responsible for the change in thermohaline circulation that occurred at the end of the period known as the "Younger Dryas" in...

A drill will be used to extract samples of the exposed mantle Scientists are to sail to the mid-Atlantic to examine a massive "open wound" on the Earth's surface.Dr Chris MacLeod, from Cardiff University, said the Earth's crust appeared to be completely missing in an area thousands of kilometres across. The hole in the crust is midway between the Cape Verde Islands and the Caribbean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The team will survey the area, up to 5km (3 miles) under the surface, from ocean research vessel RRS James Cook. The ship is on its inaugural voyage after being...

EARTH'S natural radioactivity has been measured for the first time. The measurement will help geologists find out to what extent nuclear decay is responsible for the immense quantity of heat generated by Earth. Our planet's heat output drives the convection currents that churn liquid iron in the outer core, giving rise to Earth's magnetic field. Just where this heat comes from is a big question. Measurements of the temperature gradients across rocks in mines and boreholes have led geologists to estimate that the planet is internally generating between 30 and 44 terawatts of heat. Some of this heat comes from...

Seeking the elusive 'Moho' Scientist said this week they had drilled into the lower section of Earth's crust for the first time and were poised to break through to the mantle in coming years. The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) seeks the elusive "Moho," a boundary formally known as the Mohorovicic discontinuity. It marks the division between Earth's brittle outer crust and the hotter, softer mantle. The depth of the Moho varies. This latest effort, which drilled 4,644 feet (1,416 meters) below the ocean seafloor, appears to have been 1,000 feet off to the side of where it needed to...

Adventure stories involving the exploration of the interior of Planet Earth have a long and distinguished history in science fiction. Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) was perhaps the first such tale. Despite the title, the story involves explorers following the instructions of a 17th century runic message on a trip that descends into the crater of an Icelandic volcano and into a long tunnel connecting to a vast cave containing a conveniently phosphorescent ceiling, an ocean, islands, dinosaurs, and mastodons, all in the interior of the Earth some miles beneath the surface. Following Verne’s...

Public release date: 1-Sep-2004 ] Contact: Mari N. Jensen mnjensen@email.arizona.edu 520-626-9635 University of Arizona Moho gone missing, geologists say -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Sierra Nevada is composed of granite, the rock that shows up in this picture of Temple Crag and Second Lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada. (Photo credit: Mihai Ducea. Photo permission plus full-size images of this and other illustrations are available from the researchers.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About 25 miles beneath the Earth's surface is a discrete boundary between the planet's rocky crust and the mantle below that geologists call the Moho. But in the southern end of California's San...