It’s now become easier to forecast the next eruption of Alaska’s Bogoslof volcano. New research led by Pavel Izbekov, a volcanologist at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, is applying the foundations of diffusion chronometry—the study of chemical change in crystals over time—to a new eruption forecasting approach. Izbekov’s team used crystal clusters and their collective records […]
minerals
Posted inScience Updates
Tracing Iron’s Invisible Transformations Just Beneath Our Feet
A new method that adds synthetic iron minerals to soils sheds light on hard-to-observe soil and sediment processes and may have a host of other applications in the Earth sciences and beyond.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Atomic-Scale Insights into Supercritical Silicate Fluids
Water-induced depolymerization enhances fluid mobility in deep Earth, offering new insights into magma transport and isotope signatures in arc lavas.
Posted inResearch & Developments
Trump Moves to Allow Seabed Mining in International Waters
A new executive order aims to establish the United States “as a global leader in seabed mineral exploration and development both within and beyond national jurisdiction.”
Posted inENGAGE, News
A 30,000-Year-Old Feather Is a First-of-Its-Kind Fossil
A new analysis of a fossil found in 1889 has unveiled the presence of zeolites—and an entirely new mineralization method.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Remagnetization Illuminates Tectonic Consolidation of Megacontinents
New rock and paleomagnetic research give evidence for prolonged heating during the Cambrian-Ordovician tectonic consolidation of West Gondwanaland.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Hawai’i’s Depleted Peridotite Delivers More Magma
The source for the isotopically-enriched Hawaiian magmas contains peridotites that experienced near-surface melting prior incorporation in the plume.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Explaining Mars’ Mysteriously Magnetic Crust
Fluid-rock interactions on ancient Mars may have produced abundant magnetic minerals that preserved unusually intense records of the planet’s now-extinct magnetic field.
Posted inResearch & Developments
United States and Ukraine Weigh Mineral Deal
When U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met to sign a minerals agreement on 28 February, their discussion devolved into a heated, and widely covered, exchange. The minerals agreement, if signed, would result in half of Ukraine’ future revenue from minerals and natural resources going to the United States, in exchange for U.S. military support.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Modeling Mantle Dynamics as the Earth Slowly Cools
An update of the convection code ASPECT enables full coupling of plume dynamics with buoyancy effects of transition zone phase relations, showing how early layering gave way to whole-mantle plumes.