Latest Volcanic rocks Stories

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online According to a new study from a team of German researchers, geological forces are stagnating in certain regions because of pressure-induced phase transitions. The Earth’s crust is in a constant state of flux, with solid slabs diving hundreds of miles down into the mantle as hot liquid magma rises up to fill the gaps. According to study author Falko Langenhorst from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, these forces are constantly...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Researchers for the first time have discovered evidence supporting the theory that the processes that act as catalysts for volcanic activity today are similar to those that occurred nearly four billion years ago. Writing in the journal Geology, Frances Jenner of the Carnegie Institution for Science and colleagues report that 3.8 billion-year-old volcanic rocks recovered from an island in southwestern Greenland support previous...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Even though two-thirds of the Earth's solid surface is covered with oceanic crust, scientists still do not entirely understood the process by which it is made. But a recent study from the Carnegie Institution for Science, which analyzed more than 600 samples of oceanic crust, reveals a systemic pattern that alters long-held beliefs about how the process works. Findings of this study, published in the journal Nature, explain a...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Although less than two percent of the fossils on earth are preserved in volcanic rock, researchers from the University of Montpellier have identified a new one. They found the skull of a rhino that perished in a volcanic eruption 9.2 million years ago. Found in Turkey, the fossil is thought to be that of a large two-horned rhino (Ceratotherium neumayri) that was common in the Eastern Mediterranean during that period. The unusual...