A magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit south-central Pakistan on Tuesday this week. Reports of hundreds of casualties highlight the awful scale of the tragedy, made more difficult for rescuers by the remote location…
A little more than 90 years ago, British geologist Herbert Hall Turner noticed some earthquake data that suggested a surprising explanation. The only way to explain it was if the quake had occurred hundreds…
The drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of wells for oil or gas is a well-established technique and requires large quantities of water. During the initial drilling of the well, water is needed…
The Energy Technologies Institute recently reported that without carbon capture and storage (CCS), the cost of reaching the UK’s climate change targets will double from around £30 billion per year in 2050…
Sinkholes seem to be popping up everywhere this year. March saw the tragic death of Jeff Bush in Seffner, Florida, when his bedroom collapsed into a sinkhole below his house. The same month saw the disappearance…
Because of their location’s geology, Icelandic volcanoes are known to be directly connected to the Earth’s mantle. New research shows that a volcano in Costa Rica may have a direct connection to the mantle…
It was said originally that nuclear-powered electricity would be “too cheap to meter”, but in the current climate it is nuclear’s capacity to deliver secure, low-carbon energy that appeals. We all use…
The Popocatepetl volcano in Mexico is throwing out plumes of smoke and ash, an eruption that threatens the one million inhabitants of the towns and villages nearby. Mexico City, the world’s third largest…
No-one alive today has witnessed a volcanic eruption remotely as big as the Toba “super” eruption. But our ancestors may have done, tens of thousands of years ago, when northern Sumatra exploded, creating…
Tomas Næraa, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland
Exactly 100 years ago, German geophysicist Alfred Wegener presented his theory of continental drift – the idea that the continents of Earth are gradually drifting apart. And now we have some compelling…
WHAT IS AUSTRALIA FOR? Australia is no longer small, remote or isolated. It’s time to ask What Is Australia For?, and to acknowledge the wealth of resources we have beyond mining. Currently The Conversation…
Modern-day Africa was the keystone of Gondwana, the aggregated mass of southern continents that co-existed for nearly 400m years. That supercontinent has since split apart, creating the land masses we…