geochemistry – Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org Illuminating science Mon, 16 Sep 2024 14:10:47 -0400 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2 Inside Scientists’ Life-Saving Prediction of the Iceland Eruption https://www.quantamagazine.org/inside-scientists-life-saving-prediction-of-the-iceland-eruption-20240220/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/inside-scientists-life-saving-prediction-of-the-iceland-eruption-20240220/#respond Tue, 20 Feb 2024 15:27:49 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=135544 The post Inside Scientists’ Life-Saving Prediction of the Iceland Eruption first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> On November 10, 2023, Kristín Jónsdóttir, head of the Icelandic Meteorological Office’s department of volcano research, was having a rare day off. “It was my 50th birthday,” she said. Then everything began to shake. She would spend the day staring at her phone, watching the earthquakes bloom across maps of Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula. The peninsula experiences fissure eruptions...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/inside-scientists-life-saving-prediction-of-the-iceland-eruption-20240220/feed/ 0 Deep Beneath Earth’s Surface, Clues to Life’s Origins https://www.quantamagazine.org/deep-beneath-earths-surface-clues-to-lifes-origins-20240104/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/deep-beneath-earths-surface-clues-to-lifes-origins-20240104/#respond Thu, 04 Jan 2024 15:28:32 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=133682 The post Deep Beneath Earth’s Surface, Clues to Life’s Origins first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Near midnight on March 26, 1961, dark waters lapped at the hull of a converted naval barge as it queasily rocked in the Pacific Ocean. The ship had just arrived at this spot, some 240 kilometers off the Baja peninsula, after three days of fighting seas so rough the crew had lashed gear to the deck with heavy chains, “like a rogue elephant,” the novelist John Steinbeck, who was aboard the vessel...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/deep-beneath-earths-surface-clues-to-lifes-origins-20240104/feed/ 0 Fossilized Molecules Reveal a Lost World of Ancient Life https://www.quantamagazine.org/fossilized-molecules-reveal-a-lost-world-of-ancient-life-20231023/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/fossilized-molecules-reveal-a-lost-world-of-ancient-life-20231023/#respond Mon, 23 Oct 2023 14:11:26 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=131531 The post Fossilized Molecules Reveal a Lost World of Ancient Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> A tree has something in common with the weeds and mushrooms growing around its roots, the squirrels scurrying up its trunk, the birds perched on its branches, and the photographer taking pictures of the scene. They all have genomes and cellular machinery neatly packed into membrane-bound compartments, an organizational system that places them in an immensely successful group of life forms called...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/fossilized-molecules-reveal-a-lost-world-of-ancient-life-20231023/feed/ 0 Underground Cells Make ‘Dark Oxygen’ Without Light https://www.quantamagazine.org/underground-cells-make-dark-oxygen-without-light-20230717/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/underground-cells-make-dark-oxygen-without-light-20230717/#respond Mon, 17 Jul 2023 13:49:44 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=127911 The post Underground Cells Make ‘Dark Oxygen’ Without Light first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Scientists have come to realize that in the soil and rocks beneath our feet there lies a vast biosphere with a global volume nearly twice that of all the world’s oceans. Little is known about these underground organisms, who represent most of the planet’s microbial mass and whose diversity may exceed that of surface-dwelling life forms. Their existence comes with a great puzzle: Researchers have...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/underground-cells-make-dark-oxygen-without-light-20230717/feed/ 0 Life Helps Make Almost Half of All Minerals on Earth https://www.quantamagazine.org/life-helps-make-almost-half-of-all-minerals-20220701/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/life-helps-make-almost-half-of-all-minerals-20220701/#respond Fri, 01 Jul 2022 14:00:50 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=116554 The post Life Helps Make Almost Half of All Minerals on Earth first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> The impact of Earth’s geology on life is easy to see, with organisms adapting to environments as different as deserts, mountains, forests and oceans. The full impact of life on geology, however, can be easy to miss. A comprehensive new survey of our planet’s minerals now corrects that omission. Among its findings is evidence that about half of all mineral diversity is the direct or indirect result...

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