Geology News

November 18, 2025

Top Headlines

Massive Hidden Waves Are Rapidly Melting Greenland’s Glaciers

Nov. 14, 2025 Researchers in Greenland used a 10-kilometer fiber-optic cable to track how iceberg calving stirs up warm seawater. The resulting surface tsunamis and massive hidden underwater waves intensify melting at the glacier face. This powerful mixing effect ...

A 400-million-year-old Plant Creates Water so Weird It Looks Alien

Nov. 13, 2025 Researchers discovered that living horsetails act like natural distillation towers, producing bizarre oxygen isotope signatures more extreme than anything previously recorded on Earth—sometimes resembling meteorite water. By tracing these isotopic ...

Earth Is Slowly Peeling Its Continents from Below, Fueling Ocean Volcanoes

Nov. 12, 2025 Researchers discovered that continents don’t just split at the surface—they also peel from below, feeding volcanic activity in the oceans. Simulations reveal that slow mantle waves strip continental roots and push them deep into the oceanic ...

9,000-year-old Ice Melt Shows How Fast Antarctica Can Fall Apart

Nov. 9, 2025 Around 9,000 years ago, East Antarctica went through a dramatic meltdown that was anything but isolated. Scientists have discovered that warm deep ocean water surged beneath the region’s floating ice shelves, causing them to collapse and ...

Frozen for 6 Million Years, Antarctic Ice Rewrites Earth’s Climate Story

Nov. 5, 2025 Scientists discovered 6-million-year-old ice in Antarctica, offering the oldest direct record of Earth’s ancient atmosphere and climate. The finding reveals a dramatic cooling trend and promises insights into greenhouse gas changes over millions ...

Scientists Uncover the Secret Triggers of ‘Impossible’ Earthquakes

Nov. 4, 2025 Once considered geologically impossible, earthquakes in stable regions like Utah and Groningen can actually occur due to long-inactive faults that slowly “heal” and strengthen over millions of years. When reactivated—often by human ...

Antarctic Robot ‘Lassie’ Uncovers Thousands of Icefish Nests Beneath Antarctic Ice

Oct. 29, 2025 Beneath the ice of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, scientists discovered a vast, organized city of fish nests revealed after the colossal A68 iceberg broke away. Using robotic explorers, they found over ...

Earth Is Splitting Open Beneath the Pacific Northwest

Oct. 25, 2025 For the first time, scientists have seen a subduction zone actively breaking apart beneath the Pacific Northwest. Seismic data show the oceanic plate tearing into fragments, forming microplates in a slow, step-by-step collapse. This process, once ...

China’s Coastal Cities Are Sinking as Seas Rise at Record Speed

Oct. 23, 2025 Sea levels are rising faster than at any time in 4,000 years, scientists report, with China’s major coastal cities at particular risk. The rapid increase is driven by warming oceans and melting ice, while human activities like groundwater pumping ...

They Were Drilling Off Oregon. What They Found Could Shake All of California

Oct. 23, 2025 Scientists have uncovered evidence that megaquakes in the Pacific Northwest might trigger California’s San Andreas Fault. A research ship’s navigational error revealed paired sediment layers ...

The Red Sea That Vanished and the Catastrophic Flood That Brought It Back

Oct. 8, 2025 Researchers at KAUST have confirmed that the Red Sea once vanished entirely, turning into a barren salt desert before being suddenly flooded by waters from the Indian Ocean. The flood carved deep channels and restored marine life in less than ...

Scientists Just Recreated a Wildfire That Made Its Own Weather

Oct. 2, 2025 In 2020, California’s Creek Fire became so intense that it generated its own thunderstorm, a phenomenon called a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. For years, scientists struggled to replicate these explosive fire-born storms in climate models, leaving major ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:59am EST

Scientists Uncover a Massive Hidden Crater in China That Rewrites Earth’s Recent History

Nov. 14, 2025 A massive, well-preserved impact crater has been uncovered in Guangdong, revealing the signature of a powerful meteorite strike during the Holocene. ...

Scientists Uncover What Delayed Earth’s Oxygen Boom for a Billion Years

Nov. 2, 2025 Researchers uncovered that trace compounds like nickel and urea may have delayed Earth’s oxygenation for millions of years. Experiments mimicking early Earth revealed how their concentrations ...

Earth’s “boring Billion” Set the Stage for Complex Life

Oct. 28, 2025 Scientists have traced the origins of complex life to the breakup of the supercontinent Nuna 1.5 billion years ago. This tectonic shift reduced volcanic carbon emissions, expanded shallow seas, and ...

Ancient Tides May Have Sparked Humanity’s First Urban Civilization

Oct. 27, 2025 New research shows that the rise of Sumer was deeply tied to the tidal and sedimentary dynamics of ancient Mesopotamia. Early communities harnessed predictable tides for irrigation, but when deltas ...

Hidden 5-Mile Wide Asteroid Crater Beneath the Atlantic Revealed in Stunning 3D

Oct. 27, 2025 A massive crater hidden beneath the Atlantic seafloor has been confirmed as the result of an asteroid strike from 66 million years ago. The new 3D ...

Scientists Just Uncovered What’s Really Happening Beneath This Mysterious Volcano

Oct. 27, 2025 Researchers traced tremor signals deep inside Tanzania’s Oldoinyo Lengai volcano, pinpointing their 3D locations for the first time. The study ...

A Clue to Ancient Life? What Scientists Found Inside Mars’ Frozen Vortex

Oct. 19, 2025 Mars’ north polar vortex locks its atmosphere in extreme cold and darkness, freezing out water vapor and triggering a dramatic rise in ozone. Scientists found that the lack of sunlight and moisture ...

MIT Finds Traces of a Lost World Deep Within Planet Earth

Oct. 17, 2025 Researchers have discovered chemical fingerprints of Earth's earliest incarnation, preserved in ancient mantle rocks. A unique imbalance in potassium isotopes points to remnants of “proto Earth” ...

Forged in Fire: The 900°C Heat That Built Earth’s Stable Continents

Oct. 16, 2025 New research reveals that Earth’s continents owe their stability to searing heat deep in the planet’s crust. At more than 900°C, radioactive elements shifted upward, cooling and strengthening ...

California’s Next Big One Could Be Faster and Far More Destructive

Oct. 12, 2025 Supershear earthquakes, moving faster than seismic waves, could cause catastrophic shaking across California. USC researchers warn that many faults capable of magnitude 7 quakes might produce these ...

Scientists Just Found the Shocking Reason Chile’s Quake Shook So Hard

Oct. 2, 2025 A massive quake struck Calama, Chile, in 2024, surprising scientists with its unusual depth and destructive power. Unlike typical deep quakes, it broke past thermal limits and triggered an intense ...

Scientists Crack the Explosive Secret of How Diamonds Reach the Surface

Sep. 24, 2025 Diamonds hitch a ride to the surface through explosive kimberlite eruptions, powered by volatile-rich magmas. New simulations show that carbon dioxide and water are the secret ingredients that make ...

Diamonds Reveal Hidden Chemistry Deep Inside Earth

Sep. 23, 2025 South African diamonds have revealed nickel-rich metallic inclusions, offering the first direct evidence of reactions predicted to occur deep in Earth’s mantle. The study shows how oxidized melts ...

Earthquakes Release Blistering Heat That Can Melt Rock in an Instant

Sep. 19, 2025 MIT scientists have unraveled the hidden energy balance of earthquakes by recreating them in the lab. Their findings show that while only a sliver of energy goes into the shaking we feel on the ...

Tiny Skaters Beneath the Arctic Ice Rewrite the Limits of Life

Sep. 12, 2025 Hidden within Arctic ice, diatoms are proving to be anything but dormant. New Stanford research shows these glass-walled algae glide through frozen channels at record-breaking subzero temperatures, ...

Scientists Finally Solve the Mystery of Ghostly Halos on the Ocean Floor

Sep. 10, 2025 Barrels dumped off Southern California decades ago have been found leaking alkaline waste, not just DDT, leaving behind eerie white halos and transforming parts of the seafloor into toxic vents. The ...

Earth’s Inner Core Exists Only Because of Carbon

Sep. 4, 2025 New research reveals that carbon made it possible for Earth’s molten core to freeze into a solid heart, stabilizing the magnetic field that protects our planet. Without it, Earth’s deep interior ...

Scientists Just Cracked a 60-Million-Year-Old Volcanic Mystery

Sep. 7, 2025 Cambridge scientists discovered that thin, weak zones in Earth’s plates helped spread Iceland’s mantle plume across the North Atlantic, explaining why volcanic activity once spanned thousands of ...

The Ancient Oxygen Flood That Forever Changed Life in the Oceans

Aug. 27, 2025 Ancient forests may have fueled a deep-sea oxygen boost nearly 390 million years ago, unlocking evolutionary opportunities for jawed fish and larger marine animals. New isotopic evidence shows that ...

America Is Throwing Away the Minerals That Could Power Its Future

Sep. 18, 2025 America already mines all the critical minerals it needs for energy, defense, and technology, but most are being wasted as mine tailings. Researchers discovered that minerals like cobalt, germanium, ...

Geologists Got It Wrong: Rivers Didn’t Need Plants to Meander

Aug. 31, 2025 Stanford researchers reveal meandering rivers existed long before plants, overturning textbook geology. Their findings suggest carbon-rich floodplains shaped climate for billions of ...

Mysterious Earthquake Reveals Cascadia’s Hidden Dangers

Aug. 29, 2025 In 1954, a powerful earthquake shook Northern California near Humboldt Bay, baffling scientists for decades. Most quakes in the region come from the Gorda Plate, but this one didn’t fit the ...

Scientists Reveal How Just Two Human Decisions Rewired the Great Salt Lake Forever

Aug. 19, 2025 Scientists found that Great Salt Lake’s chemistry and water balance were stable for thousands of years, until human settlement. Irrigation and farming in the 1800s and a railroad causeway in 1959 ...

NASA’s PREFIRE Satellites Reveal a Secret Glow Escaping from Our Planet

Aug. 17, 2025 With its two tiny CubeSats, NASA’s PREFIRE mission is capturing invisible heat escaping from Earth, offering clues to how ice, clouds, and storms influence the climate system. The insights could ...

Myanmar’s Massive Quake Hints at Bigger Earthquakes to Come

Aug. 17, 2025 The massive 2025 Myanmar earthquake revealed that strike slip faults can behave in surprising ways. Using satellite data, Caltech researchers found the Sagaing Fault ruptured more dramatically than ...

Ancient Predators and Giant Amphibians Found in African Fossil Treasure Trove

Aug. 13, 2025 Over 15 years of fossil excavations in Tanzania and Zambia have revealed a vivid portrait of life before Earth s most devastating mass extinction 252 million years ago. Led by the University of ...

New Simulation Reveals How Earth’s Magnetic Field First Sparked to Life

Oct. 12, 2025 Geophysicists have modeled how Earth’s magnetic field could form even when its core was fully liquid. By removing the effects of viscosity in their simulation, they revealed a self-sustaining ...

Scientists Stunned by Colossal Formations Hidden Under the North Sea

Aug. 14, 2025 Beneath the North Sea, scientists have uncovered colossal sand formations, dubbed “sinkites,” that have mysteriously sunk into lighter sediments, flipping the usual geological order. Formed ...

332 Colossal Canyons Just Revealed Beneath Antarctica’s Ice

Aug. 9, 2025 Deep beneath the Antarctic seas lies a hidden network of 332 colossal submarine canyons, some plunging over 4,000 meters, revealed in unprecedented detail by new high-resolution mapping. These ...

Snowless Winter? Arctic Field Team Finds Flowers and Meltwater Instead

July 23, 2025 Scientists in Svalbard were shocked to find rain and greenery instead of snow during Arctic winter fieldwork. The event highlights not just warming—but a full seasonal shift with major consequences ...