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Is this yet another sign that we are entering a time of increased geological instability for the state of California? For years, I have warned that it is just a matter of time before “the Big One” arrives, and the clock is ticking. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of fish have been dying and washing up on shore in northern California…

Geologic activity on Earth appears to follow a 27.5-million-year cycle, giving the planet a 'pulse,' according to a new study published in the journal Geoscience Frontiers. "Many geologists believe that geological events are random over time. But our study provides statistical evidence for a common cycle, suggesting that these geologic events are correlated and not random," said Michael Rampino, a geologist and professor in New York University's Department of Biology, as well as the study's lead author.Over the past five decades, researchers have proposed cycles of major geological events—including volcanic activity and mass extinctions on land and sea—ranging from...

I have been to Yellowstone and saw many geysers, but I never heard of sand geysers. This is quite an interesting phenomenon to say the least.

So I saw this scene, and I wondered -- can I find Ship Rock at this resolution? (Click the little picture to see the full-size 250m resolution image, which is about 5 MB, if that's a problem.) Turns out that I could. Can you? Here's Ship Rock from the ground; a place I'd like to visit someday. Likewise click for full-size. Now, here's another volcanic feature that's also in the image; on my last flight to the West Coast, I flew over it.

On Shaky Ground: Geological Faults Threaten HoustonPictured is a Houston-area map showing the locations of salt domes and known active surface faults interpreted on lidar imagery. (Credit: Shuhab Khan and Richard Engelkemeir)ScienceDaily (Apr. 29, 2008) — After finding more than 300 surface faults in Harris County, a University of Houston geologist now has information that could be vitally useful to the region's builders and city planners. This information -- the most accurate and comprehensive of its kind -- was discovered by Shuhab Khan, assistant professor of geology, and Richard Engelkemeir, a geology Ph.D. student, using advanced radar-like laser technology. Although...

Products based on NASA Earth observations and a new Internet-based decision tool are providing information to help land and water managers combat tamarisk (saltcedar), an invasive plant species damaging precious water supplies in the western United States. This decision tool, called the Invasive Species Forecasting System (ISFS), is being used at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Institute of Invasive Species Science in Fort Collins, Colo. It is the result of combining USGS science and NASA Earth observations, software engineering and high- performance computing expertise. "The ISFS combines NASA satellite data with tens of thousands of field sampling measurements, which...

PARIS - Saturn's planet-size moon Titan has dramatic weather, with freezing temperatures, carbon- and nitrogen-rich clouds and possibly lightning, scientists said Wednesday, describing a world that may have looked like Earth before life developed. The European Space Agency's probe landed on Titan in January, uncovering some mysteries of the methane-rich globe - the only moon in the solar system known to have a thick atmosphere. Scientists presented detailed results of months of study in the journal Nature and at a news conference in Paris. Titan has long intrigued researchers because it is surrounded by a thick blanket of nitrogen and...

There occurred violent earthquakes and floods. And in a single day and night of misfortune... the island of Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea." This account, written by Plato more than 2,300 years ago, set scientists on the trail of the lost city of Atlantis. Did it ever exist? And if so, where was it located, and when did it disappear? In a recent paper in Geology, Marc-Andre Gutscher of the European Institute for Marine Studies in Plouzané gives details of one candidate for the lost city: the submerged island of Spartel, west of the Straits of Gibraltar....

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...

Moon model: a superplume from inside the Moon when it was just 500 million years old might explain a lot - and not just about the Moon (Pic: University of California).  A mighty 'burp' early in the Moon's life may explain something that has puzzled scientists ever since Apollo astronauts brought back rock samples; why are there so many ancient magnetised rocks lying on the surface? Research published in the journal Nature this week from the University of California at Berkeley, in the United States, suggests that an expunged column of hot rock - like a blob rising to...

The old lignite skull ANOTHER MYSTERY SKULL... THIS TIME AN ANCIENT EUROPEAN WHICH, SAY FRANCOIS DE SARRE AND MICHEL GRANGER, COULD CHALLENGE THE OFFICIAL VIEW OF HUMAN ORIGINS. 0fficially, the origin of the first true Humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) dates back 2.5 million years. Before this time lived other hominids whose bones cannot be confused with those of Homo's lineage. Against this background, we have the 2oo-year old enigma of an 'impossibly' ancient humanoid skull from the mining town of Freiberg, in Saxony, Germany, which, if verified, could be more than 10 million years old - far older than...

Vostok: The Lake of ShadowsCover Story FATE Magazine 2002-06-01 00:00:00 by Scott Corrales “Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is inevitable; yet if I suppressed what will seem extravagant and incredible there would be nothing left.” —H. P. Lovecraft, “At the Mountains of Madness” The inspiration for this article began in the summer of 1996, when a series of email messages began to appear suggesting the possibility that “someone” or “something” was surreptitiously removing all recent maps of Antarctica. The notion was so outrageous that even die-hard conspiracy theorists found themselves having to clarify the...