Largest Asteroid Crater Found

Geophysicists have accidentally discovered a 400-km-wide impact zone in the Warburton Basin of Central Australia due to an asteroid that broke into two pieces before striking Earth an estimated 300 million years old, twice the size of the Chicxulub crater of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.

Earth's Inner Inner Core

Reading seismic waves that resonate in the aftermath of an earthquake, seismologists have discovered the dense, inner core at the center of the Earth has itself a distinct inner core of about half the diameter, both cores composed of iron crystals but with different and unique properties, possibly different crystalline phases.

Dark Side of the Moon Mystery

Astrophysicists have solved the Lunar Farside Highlands Problem, the question dating from 1959 as to why the far side of the Moon has no maria like the near side, the explanation being that the Moon was tidally locked with Earth's orbit soon after its formation resulting in a temperature gradient and thicker crust on the side facing away from Earth.

"Zebra Stripes" in Van Allen Belt

NASA's Van Allen probes have detected a persistent pattern in the inner radiation belt surrounding Earth similar to "zebra stripes," a distortion caused by the rotation of the planet that was previously thought incapable of affecting the high-energy electrons of the belts with velocities near the speed of light.

First Data on Ball Lightning

While recording a thunderstorm in China, a team of researchers captured a ball lightning event on their instruments for the first time with spectrographic readings indicating the composition of the lightning the same as that of the soil, speculating the origin of ball lightning to be a combination of vaporization of silicon oxide and the resulting shockwave of the strike.

Earthquake Lights Explained

New research finds that mysterious lights reported for centuries before or during seismic activity are associated with areas of geological rift zones, and are theorized to be electrical charges generated from stresses between rocks that travel vertically along fault lines.

Unique Supervolcano Eruptions

Using models and simulations, volcanologists have determined that supervolcanoes erupt by very different mechanisms than smaller volcanoes, with the buoyancy of the molten rock creating stress that cracks open the top of the chamber instead of underground pressure building until it breaches the surface.

Seismic Waves Reveal Hotspots

Scientists have taken advantage of a previously unknown type of slow-moving seismic waves to map channels of heat flow and "hotspots" of volcanic surfacing in Earth's mantle using new models similar to computerized tomography (CT) scans of the human body.

Meteor Shockwave Circled Globe

The shockwave from a 17-m, 10,000-ton meteor that burned up over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February was powerful enough to circle the Earth twice, as measured by an International Monitoring System designed to detect ultra-low frequency acoustic waves (infrasound) from nuclear tests.

Earth's Magnetic Poles Flipped

Analyzing sediment from the floor of the Black Sea, scientists have determined the Earth's magnetic poles reversed and then reversed again relatively quickly about 41,000 years ago, with the process that normally takes millennia completing its cycle in only about 200 years and during which the magnetic field strength was only one-twentieth what it is today.

Ethiopia's Magnetic Stripes

Huge magnetic stripes mapped out in the Tendaho Graben of the Afar Depression of Ethiopia reveal a point where three of Earth's tectonic plates meet and are stretching apart to eventually form a new ocean, the first such stripes documented on land instead of occurring on the sea floor.

Japan Quake Shifted Satellites

The Tōhoku earthquake that struck Japan last March was so strong as to alter Earth's gravitational field enough to change the orbit of the twin Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, sensitive NASA instruments designed to map Earth's gravity field from 500 km above the surface.

Earth's Antiproton Ring

The European PAMELA satellite has detected a ring of naturally occurring antiprotons that surrounds Earth, confined by the inner magnetic field of the Van Allen radiation belts in much the same way scientists trap antiprotons in the laboratory.

Ancient Mantle Plume

Evidence found in the African and Indian tectonic plates indicates a mantle plume originating about 67 million years ago propelled the Indian plate toward Asia for about 5 million years while at the same time slowing the motion of the African plate significantly.

Io's Magma "Ocean"

New analysis of data from the Galileo spacecraft reveals a large "ocean" of magma or partially molten rock below the crust of Jupiter's moon Io, explaining why this moon is the most volcanic body in the solar system.

Yellowstone Magma Plume

Conductivity readings of the magma plume feeding the Yellowstone area have provided the first "geoelectric" three-dimensional image of the underground hotspot, revealing that the buried supervolcano may be larger than originally thought.

New Lumpy Gravity Map

Data collected from the European satellite Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) has produced an irregular, lumpy digital geoid of Earth's gravitational field, the most accurate model of the planet's gravity ever produced.

Enceladus Generating Power

New data from the Cassini spacecraft show that the internal heat-generated power of Saturn's moon Enceladus as detected through linear fissures at its southern polar region is more than an order of magnitude greater than expected, with the mechanism of this power output unknown.

Nanodiamonds Found in Ice

A layer of microscopic nanodiamonds has been discovered in the Greenland ice sheet, providing further support for the theory that North American and Europe were struck by a large cometary fragment some 12,900 years ago.

Tectonic Plate Modeling

Researchers at Caltech have developed advanced computer algorithms that allow the simultaneous modeling of Earth's mantle flow, tectonic plate movements and fault zones to allow the simulation of the global interactive forces of plate tectonics with a resolution down to 1 km.