Earth

The form of many of the world's mountain ranges has been brought about through the erosive capabilities of the glaciers that lay upon them.

Glacial erosion is generally depicted as a steady process, occurring over long periods coupled with steady motion of the glaciers. It is becoming increasingly evident that glaciers do not always behave in a steady manner and that at times they can undergo rapid advancements over their base similar to the way an earthquake slips. The sudden slip generates seismicity that can be observed remotely.

This article shows that mantle plumes -- hot, upwelling portions of the Earth's mantle -- create large quantities of gold-rich crust when they are melted. These gold-rich rocks contain up to 13 times the amount of gold in normal crust.

This means that crust created from mantle plumes represent a rich source of gold and other metals which could be incorporated into mineral deposits. As such, mineral deposits created by sourcing metals from such rocks may be larger or occur more frequently than deposits formed from normal crust.

Plumes of hot, buoyant material are thought to rise from the deepest mantle, near the core-mantle boundary.

In the shallow mantle, the plumes partially melt, and the melt is erupted at the surface at hotspot volcanoes. Several hotspot volcanoes, including those in Hawaii, Samoa, and the Marquesas, exhibit two parallel volcanic lineaments that are geochemically distinct. This geochemical separation is thought to result from the plumes being sourced from the northern side of a large, enriched geochemical and seismological anomaly in the deepest mantle.

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PASADENA, Calif.—In order to build the next generation of nuclear reactors, materials scientists are trying to unlock the secrets of certain materials that are radiation-damage tolerant. Now researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have brought new understanding to one of those secrets—how the interfaces between two carefully selected metals can absorb, or heal, radiation damage.

To help planes fly safely through cold, wet, and icy conditions, a team of Japanese scientists has developed a new super water-repellent surface that can prevent ice from forming in these harsh atmospheric conditions. Unlike current inflight anti-icing techniques, the researchers envision applying this new anti-icing method to an entire aircraft like a coat of paint.

What makes soccer star Christiano Ronaldo's "knuckleball" shot so unpredictable and difficult to stop? At the American Physical Society's (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) meeting, November 18 – 20, 2012, in San Diego, Calif., a team of researchers investigating this phenomenon will reveal their findings.

By tweaking the formula for growing oxide thin films, researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory achieved virtual perfection at the interface of two insulator materials.

This finding, published in the journal Advanced Materials, could have significant ramifications for creation of novel materials with applications in energy and information technologies, leading to more efficient solar cells, batteries, solid oxide fuel cells, faster transistors and more powerful capacitors.

"You look at the material world and see objects and how you can use them. I look at the material world and see a fascinating hidden life which is within our control, if we can only understand how it works," says Jane Lipson, the Albert W. Smith Professor of Chemistry at Dartmouth. Lipson looks at things from the point of view of both a chemist and a physicist. "What I do lies between the two sciences, and there is some engineering thrown in there, too," she says.

Come rain or shine (or even snow), some glaciers of the Himalayas will continue shrinking for many years to come.

The forecast by Brigham Young University geology professor Summer Rupper comes after her research on Bhutan, a region in the bull's-eye of the monsoonal Himalayas. Published in Geophysical Research Letters, Rupper's most conservative findings indicate that even if climate remained steady, almost 10 percent of Bhutan's glaciers would vanish within the next few decades. What's more, the amount of melt water coming off these glaciers could drop by 30 percent.

Much biological research on climate change focuses on the impacts of warming and changes in precipitation over wide areas. Researchers are now increasingly recognizing that at the local scale they must understand the effects of climate change through the intertwined patterns of soils, vegetation, and water flowpaths—not forgetting the uses humans have made of the landscape. In the December issue of BioScience researchers describe how aboveground and belowground responses to springtime warming are becoming separated in time in a forest in New England.

Vienna (16 November, 2012)—The world's rapidly dwindling forests should be valued as more than just "carbon warehouses" to mitigate climate change, according to a new report released today from the International Union of Forest Research Organizations(IUFRO), the world's largest network of forest scientists. In fact, biodiversity is found to be a critical determinant of a forest's ability to absorb greenhouse gases.

The remarkable properties and subsequent applications of graphene have been well-documented since it was first isolated in 2004; however, researchers are still trying to find a quick, cheap and efficient way of measuring its thickness.

A group of researchers from China appear to have solved this problem by devising a universal method using just a standard optical microscope.

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- Supercharging is a technique no longer confined to automotive enthusiasts.

Artem Rudenko, a new assistant professor of physics at Kansas State University and member of the James R. Macdonald Laboratory, was one of the principal investigators in an international physics collaboration that used the world's most powerful X-ray laser to supercharge an atom. By stripping a record 36 electrons from a xenon atom, researchers were able to bring the atom to a high positively charged state thought to unachievable with X-ray energy.

Boulder, Colo., USA – The latest Lithosphere articles to go online 26 October through 14 November include studies of slab dynamics both on Earth and on Mars; several discussions of the Troodos ophiolite, Cyprus, as well as other ophiolites; analysis and dating of the Jurassic Bonanza arc, Vancouver Island, Canada; fault system characterization in the central Bhutanese Himalaya; and sandstone dating in northern Russia.