Earth Sciences
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Explainer
What is radiometric dating?
Dive headfirst into the weird world of dating by radioactive decay.
You’ll hear it often in stories about palaeontology and archaeology: “the wood was dated using radiocarbon dating”, “...
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Research
Living fossil discovered below Earth’s surface
Microbe may have been in evolutionary stasis for millions of years.
A microbe that feeds on radioactivity has been at an evolutionary standstill for up to 175 million years, researchers...
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Forecasting volcano eruption style
Magma viscosity could help scientists identify the hazards of future eruptions.
Scientists studying the 2018 eruption of Kīlauea volcano in Hawai'i have discovered a way to predict the violence of ...
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Conversation
First continents formed with a dash of mantle water
New research cracks the mystery of how the first continents formed.
By Chris Kirkland, Curtin University; Hugh Smithies, Curtin University, and Tim Johnson, Curtin University Earth i...
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Ancient Pilbara rocks speak of Earth’s first continents
A new study of rocks in Western Australia’s Pilbara region rewrites the history of early continen...
A new study of the famous iron-red rocks in Western Australia’s arid Pilbara region has revealed that the formation o...
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Microplastics in soils
Microplastics are a hidden source of soil carbon, and not in a good way.
Microplastics appear to be interfering with the very fabric of Earth: its soils and the millions of microbes living i...
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Explainer
Explainer: Myth-busting the Boring Billion
A thousand million years can’t all be dull, can they?
Geologists are fond of giving dramatic names to past events, such as “The Great Dying” or “Snowball Earth” or “The Ca...
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Flood forecasting: what next?
New space technologies are set to improve our flood watch and warning capabilities.
Easing rainfall today will start to bring some relief to flood-hit parts of eastern Australia – not immediately in ma...
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Video
Our favourite Iceland volcano shots
Iceland’s Mount Fagradalsfjall active for first time in 6,000 years.
After more than 40,000 earthquakes on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland over the past four weeks, lava began to burs...
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Did lightning spark life on Earth?
Scientists say bolts could have unlocked a key ingredient for life.
A quintillion lightning strikes over a billion years may have helped kickstart life on Earth, according to scientists...
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Spotting bushfires from space
Eyes in the sky may help put out bushfires within minutes.
Storm-chasing drones, smart water bombers, and a constellation of bushfire-spotting satellites could be the key to re...
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Greenland’s lost and found forest
Misplaced core sample shows plant bounty, but it’s not good news.
In a bizarre story of lost and found, scientists have unraveled Greenland's secret – It really might have been forest...