Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Earth
Particular Problems
Toxicologists and chemists are forging a new field called nanotoxicology as they grapple with assessing the safety of engineered nanoparticles.
- Earth
Brain Delay: Air pollutants linked to slow childhood mental development
Pollutants spewing from vehicles and power plants may be harmful to fetal brains.
- Earth
Seismic Speed Traps: Iron-rich regions may slow deep-Earth vibes
Large quantities of iron-rich minerals may be responsible for the sluggishness of seismic waves traveling through certain regions deep within Earth.
- Earth
Greenland glacial quakes becoming more common
The number of earthquakes that occur beneath surging glaciers in Greenland has doubled in the past 4 years.
- Earth
Buried Treasures
Geologists have long understood the chemical processes that sculpt many cave formations, but they've only recently come up with a physical model that explains some of their shapes.
- Earth
Limited Storage: Lack of nutrients will constrain carbon uptake
Even though the carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere acts as a fertilizer for plants, the planet's vegetation won't be able to sequester large amounts of that greenhouse gas in the long term because it will quickly run out of other nutrients.
- Earth
Region at Risk
Scientists are still analyzing the magnitude 7.9 quake that struck San Francisco a century ago and, at the same time, are scrambling to estimate when the next large quake will strike the Bay Area.
- Earth
Volcanic mineral caused rare cancer in Turkey
In two Turkish villages, nearly half of all deaths since 1980 have resulted from a form of cancer caused by inhaling erionite, a brittle and fibrous volcanic mineral that looks similar to wool.
- Earth
Coral Clues: Rise and fall of reefs record quakes’ effects
Shallow coral reefs around islands west of Sumatra chronicled the uplift and subsidence that resulted from the massive quakes that struck that region in 2004 and 2005.
- Earth
Shafts of snow sculpted by sun
Physicists have created miniature, laboratory versions of towering snow spikes found high in the Andes Mountains.
- Earth
Uncharted Territory
Ultraslow-spreading undersea ridges are giving oceanographers fresh insights into how Earth's crust forms.
- Earth
Still Standing: Tsunamis won’t wash away Maldives atolls
The December 2004 tsunami had little geological impact on the seemingly fragile coral-reef islands of the Maldives archipelago.
