Earth

COLLEGE PARK, Md - Geologists may have uncovered the answer to an age-old question – an ice-age-old question, that is. It appears that Earth's earliest ice ages may have been due to the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, which consumed atmospheric greenhouse gases and chilled the earth.

Scientists studying the world's most unusual volcano have discovered the reason behind its unique carbon-based lavas. The new geochemical analyses reveals that an extremely small degree of partial melting of typical minerals in the earth's upper mantle is the source of the rare carbon-derived lava erupting from Tanzania's Oldoinyo Lengai volcano.