Category: Geology

Contaminants in groundwater can take over 20 years to break down But scientists have a method for removing the contaminants more quickly, using a underground barrier.

Kristen Amodeo

Have you ever driven past an old factory building and wondered what ever happened to the harsh chemicals that were used there? If you guessed that a lot of the chemicals ended up in the environment, you would be right. READ MORE

A Special Kind of Bacteria Lets Cement Fix Itself Mineral-forming bacteria that grow best in fast-flowing liquid may be the glue that researchers need to close cracks in underground cement.

Samantha Peterson

Cement is one of those common building materials that you can find just about anywhere. When the cement starts to get cracked, fixing it is generally an easy task that involves widening the crack slightly before filling it with more READ MORE

Mining with acid-generating bacteria Sulfuric acid production by sulfur-oxidizing bacteria may be a solution to a long standing mining problem.

Mackenzie Best

Sulfuric acid production by sulfur-oxidizing bacteria may be a solution to a long standing mining problem.

Oxygen, nitrogen, and what happens when biology gets involved How the Great Oxidation Event and photosynthesis created the nitrogen cycle we know today

Rebecca Salcedo

When studying Earth’s past, researchers want to understand how nutrients like nitrogen cycled and the impact biology had on them. Scientists rely on ancient rock, soil, fossils, and marine sediment to understand the world that used to be.  Approximately 2.5 READ MORE

Can life hiding near Yellowstone National Park’s hot springs tell us about the ancient Earth? Sunlight-driven life hiding under layers of silica near Yellowstone’s hot springs may hold clues for what Earth was like billions of years ago

Mary Sabuda

Yellowstone National Park is famous for its hot springs, geysers, wildlife, and incredible geology. While the area is popular among visitors every year, scientists are also excited about the hot springs at this site as they create unique habitats for READ MORE

Are the Building Blocks of Life From A Hydrothermal Vent? How studying hydrothermal systems gives us a window into our past

Osama Alian

When scientists think of a very early Earth, they think of a hot, hostile place not too long after the birth of the solar system more than 4 billion years ago. This time in the Earth’s history is called the READ MORE

Believe it or not, we can (kind of) measure the air pressure of early Earth! Blue-green algae's response to different nitrogen pressures may tell us what fossils to look for and what those fossils tell us about ancient air pressure.

Sanjoy Som

Blue-green algae’s response to different nitrogen pressures may tell us what fossils to look for and what those fossils tell us about ancient air pressure.

Using Gas Bubbles in Lava to Predict Ancient Air Pressure Scientists can estimate what the atmospheric pressure was on Earth 2.7 billion years ago, and the findings may help us understand how life formed

Sciworthy Staff

by Sumeet Kulkarni Guest Contributor, BMSIS Young Scientist Program What was the weather like in New York last week? You can look it up on weather.com. What was it like on March 7, 1953, in the pre-internet era? You might be READ MORE

For a Cooler Climate, Just Add Ice Should scientists attempt to slow climate change by intentionally increasing the size of the Greenland Ice Sheet to reflect sunlight away from the planet?

Sciworthy Staff

Should we geoengineer larger ice caps to reflect radiation away from the Earth to cool the climate? Is this a good idea? This article briefly explores these questions, based on the work of Jacob Haqq-Misra of Blue Marble Space Institute of Science.

Lasers and Fool’s Gold Give a Glimpse Into Our Ocean’s Past The amount of pyrite in the sea floor gives us an idea of how much oxygen was in the ocean millions of years ago.

Daniel Gregory

The amount of trace elements in ocean pyrite correspond to ocean oxygen concentrations at different points in geologic time.