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The ancient sea floor was discovered in southwest Greenland A sliver of four-billion-year-old sea floor has offered a glimpse into the inner workings of an adolescent Earth.The baked and twisted rocks, now part of Greenland, show the earliest evidence of plate tectonics, colossal movements of the planet's outer shell. Until now, researchers were unable to say when the process, which explains how oceans and continents form, began. The unique find, described in the journal Science, shows the movements started soon after the planet formed. "Since the plate tectonic paradigm is the framework in which we interpret all modern-day geology,...

Earth's magnetic field - the force that protects us from deadly radiation bursts from outer space - is weakening dramatically. Scientists have discovered that its strength has dropped precipitously over the past two centuries and could disappear over the next 1,000 years. The effects could be catastrophic. Powerful radiation bursts, which normally never touch the atmosphere, would heat up its upper layers, triggering climatic disruption. Navigation and communication satellites, Earth's eyes and ears, would be destroyed and migrating animals left unable to navigate. 'Earth's magnetic field has disappeared many times before - as a prelude to our magnetic poles flipping...

Jupiter's Spots Disappear Amid Major Climate Change By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer posted: 01:00 pm ET 21 April 2004 Jupiter is undergoing major climate change and could lose many of its large spots over the next seven years, only to make way for the creation of fresh spots in a decades-long cycle, according to a new explanation of old mysteries. While the analysis remains to be proven, it is seen by other researchers as interesting and, importantly, testable even with large backyard telescopes. Philip Marcus, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who came up with the...

Researchers are preparing to test the highly controversial theory of a San Diego scientist, J. Marvin Herndon, who thinks a huge, natural nuclear reactor or "georeactor" -- a vast deposit of uranium several miles wide -- exists at Earth's core, thousands of miles beneath our feet... [I]t might help to explain otherwise puzzling phenomena of planetary science, such as fluctuations in the intensity of Earth's magnetic field... If Herndon's theoretical nuclear reactor really exists, then it should be gushing out antineutrinos that would fly through the roughly 4,000 miles of solid rock and emerge at the Earth's surface.

When you consider that his committee's sole function was to advise whether or not research funds should be spent to investigate an entirely new area of physics and electrochemistry, and that this statement is one of his principal reasons for deciding not to invest such research funds, his statement takes on an almost Kafkaesque quality. It is unwise to invest research funds in any new area, unless we already have a thorough foundation in the basics of that new area? How could anyone ever get any money for research out of professor Huizenga's committee? By proving that they already know...

Slowly Strangling America's Golden Goose© 2006 J. Marvin HerndonTransdyne Corporation   Imagine: You wake up tomorrow and find that America’s judicial system has changed. Now, prosecutors can present secret witness testimony and only provide their own brief excerpts or summaries to the defense; judges are no longer independent, they have been replaced by the prosecutor’s boss. Your first thought, “Now, we will get much needed criminal convictions.” Then, “Ohmygosh! Are we in deep yogurt! We have seen all that before, in the Spanish Inquisition and in virtually every totalitarian regime on Earth, so we know what will happen. Soon...

Lava left its mark on Grand Canyon Friday, 15 February 2008 Larry O'Hanlon Discovery News Volcanic lava flows onced dammed the river that ran through the Grand Canyon (Source: iStockphoto) The Grand Canyon was not just carved by water. It has also been the scene of periodic wars between the Colorado River and volcanic eruptions that dammed the river, then burst. New airborne elevation survey data and radioisotope dating of Grand Canyon lava flows sheds new light on the battle between water and molten rocks there over the past 725,000 years. Over that time there have been no fewer than...

Earth gives off a relentless hum of countless notes completely imperceptible to the human ear, like a giant, exceptionally quiet symphony, but the origin of this sound remains a mystery. Now unexpected powerful tunes have been discovered in this hum. These new findings could shed light on the source of this enigma. The planet emanates a constant rumble far below the limits of human hearing, even when the ground isn't shaking from an earthquake. (It does not cause the ringing in the ear linked with tinnitus.) This sound, first discovered a decade ago, is one that only scientific instruments -...

Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth's liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet's surface, a new study says. "What is so surprising is that rapid, almost sudden, changes take place in the Earth's magnetic field," said study co-author Nils Olsen, a geophysicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen. The findings suggest similarly quick changes are simultaneously occurring in the liquid metal, 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) below the surface, he said. The swirling flow of molten iron and nickel around Earth's solid center triggers an electrical current, which generates the...