“New research has provided the strongest evidence yet that Earth’s continents were formed by giant meteorite impacts that were particularly prevalent during the first billion years or so of our planet’s four-and-a-half-billion year history.”
Geology
At Nautilus: Life Helps Make Almost Half of All Minerals on Earth
“A new origins-based system for classifying minerals reveals the huge geochemical imprint that life has left on Earth. It could help us identify other worlds with life too.”
Researchers: How plate tectonics, mountains and deep-sea sediments have maintained Earth’s ‘Goldilocks’ climate
In an article summarized at The Conversation, recent research affirms the suite of conditions involving plate tectonics and resultant mountain-building, coupled with erosion and volcanic activity, that has helped to maintain a habitable climate on our planet.
From Evolution News: Luskin Explores Design Evidence from Geology
For those who have eyes to see, nature reveals design across the scientific disciplines.
Can a now-lost continent shed light on the evolution of mammals?
At ScienceDaily: A team of geologists and palaeontologists has discovered that, some 50 million years ago, there was a low-lying continent separating Europe from Asia that they have named Balkanatolia. At the time, it was inhabited by an endemic fauna that was very different from those of Europe and Asia.
Did glaciers cause a billion-year gap in information about the development of life?
At Vice: This giant lapse in Earth’s memory exceeds one billion years in some places, resulting in 550 million-year-old rocks sitting atop ancient layers that date back 1.7 billion years, with no trace of the many lost epochs in between…
Apparently, some people have noticed the nonsense at Nature Communications about geology as not a safe field for persons of color
About that third comment above: There is no reason to put “scholarship” and “Nature Communications” in the same sentence if this “paper” is supposed to be an example of the type of thing it produces.
We are informed at Nature Communications that geology is not a safe field for persons of color due to rock hammers
Is it significant that the same people who simply do not want to accept that Darwin had transparent white supremacy beliefs think that geologists’ rock hammers are a big problem?
Did a magnetic field reversal doom the Neanderthals?
A theory this exotic is bound to be popular. Archaeologist and anthropologist Anna Goldfield assesses the evidence. She points out that Neanderthals generally didn’t live in the areas where they’d be most affected … (more)
Casey Luskin is back, after years in the field!
Why he left (the non-conspiracy version): My PhD project focused on the “Pongola Supergroup,” a major section of supracrustal rocks in southeastern South Africa (Kwazulu-Natal and Mpumalanga provinces) and southern Swaziland, aged ~2.8 – 3.0 billion years old.
Suffice to say, this project involved months and even years of fieldwork, lab work, data analysis, and writeup. Like most PhDs, mine had its ups and downs, complete with excitement, fun, blood, sweat, tears, near-madness, sheer terror, and utter boredom.
The Privileged Planet, Redux
We’ve all heard about the fine-tuning of physical constants–just change them ever so slightly and a different kind of universe emerges. Then, there’s simply our location in our galaxy that allows us to see outwards to the galaxy itself, and beyond. Now, even the radioactivity in the earth’s core seems to be conducive to life. Read More…
Sabine Hossenfelder: Flat Earthers are wrong but not stupid
Hossenfelder: It is not possible for each and every one of us to redo all experiments in the history of science. It therefore becomes increasingly important that scientists provide evidence for how science works, so that people who cannot follow the research itself can instead rely on evidence that the system produces correct and useful descriptions of nature.
Paper: Earth’s magnetic field can change ten times faster than thought
If this holds up, perhaps it will play a role one day in unraveling some mysteries.
New radiocarbon dating may shift historical ages
Expect more dating controversies in archaeology, some of which impinge on events that people care about.
Two mysterious blobs of hot rock at the edge of Earth’s core are “massive anomalies”
At Quanta, it’s suggested they might be linked to extinction events.