Indigenous artists have been engraving rock shelters for millennia - long before the Kimberley’s celebrated rock art paintings. Now the rocks’ natural coatings are yielding clues to the engravings’ creation.
An irregular cluster of fossil spores. (Scale 10 micrometres.)
Paul Strother
Without a magnetic field, the Moon’s surface is exposed to solar wind. These could have been depositing resources like water and potential rocket fuel on the Moon’s surface for billions of years.
Earth scientists are on the skilled occupation list for immigration even as universities cut back in this area. The problem lies with a funding model that offers no incentive to lift graduate numbers.
Stunning mosaic of oxidised copper in the form of azurite (blue) and malachite (green) in a rock.
Dimitri Houtteman
When borders reopen, take an Aussie road trip and explore the continent’s unique geology, from meteorites in the Nullarbor Plain to rock formations that are billions of years old.
Mars northern polar cap, photographed by the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Franck Montmessin, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) – Université Paris-Saclay
New results show why and how water is disappearing from Mars atmosphere.
New research suggests that Venus’ crust is broken into large blocks – the dark reddish–purple areas – that are surrounded by belts of tectonic structures shown in lighter yellow–red.
Paul K. Byrne/NASA/USGS
Researchers used decades-old radar data and found that some low-lying areas of Venus’ crust are moving and jostling. This evidence is some of the strongest yet of tectonic activity on Venus.
Two new NASA missions hope to answer important questions about Venus’ past.
NASA/JPL/USGS
Two new NASA missions – VERITAS and DAVINCI+ – are headed to Venus. The missions will use radar and a probe to learn about Earth’s hard-to-study and potentially prophetic neighbor.
This isn’t a painting or a stained-glass window — it’s a microscope image of light shining through the Earth’s mantle.
Heather Handley
I look at fragments of the Earth’s mantle under a microscope to learn how fast molten rock moves from deep in the Earth to the surface. This can help us prepare for future volcanic eruptions.
Evidence from the Pilbara region suggests Earth in its youth behaved very differently to how it does today, and had more water within it than previously thought.
Ga-Mohana Hill in South Africa’s Northern Cape province.
Benjamin Schoville