(Natural News) A recent study published in the journal Nature Geoscience suggests that Earth’s deep mantle likely harbors hydrous minerals that are in an extreme phase of water known as “superionic ice.” Also called “superionic water,” superionic ice is black, hot and several times heavier than normal ice. This strange phase has both solid and liquid properties at the same time – […]

(Natural News) A recent study showed that pesticides can harm bee populations for generations. The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, found that bee populations can take a hit for generations once a bee is exposed to a common pesticide in its first year of life. […]

(Natural News) Is the Yellowstone Volcano due for another supereruption? Geologists assure everyone that the volcano will not be erupting violently anytime soon. But because the volcano erupts every 600,000 to 700,000 years on average, many believe that it is overdue for another one. The latest reports from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) have done little to […]

(Natural News) Combinations of different pesticides are harmful to bees — important insects that help pollinate the environment, according to a recent study. There is global concern over declines in pollinators, and these cocktail pesticides could be detrimental to already endangered bee populations. “Interactions between multiple agrochemicals significantly increase bee mortality,” the study’s lead author, […]

(Natural News) A massive “ocean” hidden in the Earth’s mantle may be triggering earthquakes that originate deep in the planet’s interior. This is what researchers from Carnegie Institute for Science and University of Alberta in Canada suggest in their study, which links fluids trapped in rocks deep underground to so-called deep-focus earthquakes. The researchers detailed their findings in a paper published May 26 in […]

(Natural News) While most think of major fault lines like the San Andreas Fault when it comes to the big one even smaller faults can still pose a major earthquake hazard. According to a team of geophysicists from the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, this is […]

(Natural News) Researchers from Rice University in Texas and the University of California, Riverside have found that gems can grow within hours inside extreme igneous rocks called pegmatites, instead of the thousands of years they usually take to form. In a study published in the journal Nature, the researchers described how they examined sample crystals from a pegmatite mine in […]

(Natural News) Earth is wrapped by a magnetic field powered by the churning of hot molten metals in the outer core. Thanks to this invisible field, the planet is protected from the solar wind and cosmic particles, permitting just enough radiation to tide humans by. This magnetic field, however, can flip and does so many times every million years […]

(Natural News) An unusual mineral was discovered embedded within a diamond from a South African volcanic site. The mineral called goldschmidtite represents a new supergroup of minerals, according to a study published in the journal American Mineralogist, and it could hint at the chemical processes that occur deep within the Earth’s mantle. Named in honor of the geochemist […]

(Natural News) Plate tectonics is the widely accepted theory that the outer shell of the Earth is divided into several pieces, known as plates. These plates slowly glide across the Earth’s mantle, the rocky inner layer above the planet’s core. This movement causes both earthquakes and the movement of continents across the surface of the Earth. […]