Earth

Study of natural-occurring 100,000 year-old CO2 reservoirs shows no significant corroding of 'cap rock', suggesting the greenhouse gas hasn't leaked back out - one of the main concerns with greenhouse gas reduction proposal of carbon capture and storage.

New research shows that natural accumulations of carbon dioxide (CO2) that have been trapped underground for around 100,000 years have not significantly corroded the rocks above, suggesting that storing CO2 in reservoirs deep underground is much safer and more predictable over long periods of time than previously thought.

Variations in the ability of sand particles kicked into the atmosphere from deserts in the Middle East to absorb heat can change the intensity of the Indian Summer Monsoon, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin.

The research was published July 28 in Scientific Reports, an open access journal from the publishers of Nature.

LOGAN, UTAH, USA - Effective carbon capture and storage or "CCS" in underground reservoirs is one possible way to meet ambitious climate change targets demanded by countries and international partnerships around the world. But are current technologies up to the task of securely and safely corralling buoyant carbon dioxide (CO2) for at least 10,000 years - the minimum time period required of most agreements?

LAWRENCE -- In December of last year, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe announced startling results hinting at the existence of an undiscovered subatomic particle -- one with a mass six times heavier than the Higgs boson, the particle that made headlines in 2012.

The evidence is still thin, but if more data confirm the finding, it could sharpen humankind's understanding of the building blocks of the universe.

MADISON - In molten sandstone extracted by prospectors a century ago, an international team of scientists has discovered microscopic crystals telling of unimaginable pressures and temperatures when a 12-kilometer asteroid formed Meteor Crater in northern Arizona some 49,000 years ago.

Current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations already commit the planet to air temperatures over many land regions being eventually warmed by greater than 1.5°C, according to new research published today (27 July 2016) in the journal Scientific Reports.

There is a growing interest in the scientific community in a type of high-power neutron source that is created via a process referred to as spallation. This process involves accelerating high-energy protons towards a liquid metal target made of material with a heavy nucleus. The issue here is that scientists do not always understand the mechanism of residue nuclei production, which can only be identified using spectrometry methods to detect their radioactive emissions.

The ongoing fraud investigation into the nearly $7 billion Mississippi clean coal plant has sparked debate on whether carbon capture is a viable technology. But to lesser fanfare, other industrial efforts to keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere are moving forward successfully. Now scientists report in ACS' journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research a new approach to accomplishing this while also cleaning up waste from the marble industry.

Alexandria, VA - During the Second Punic War, Hannibal, in a brazen move, led a massive army over the Alps, surprising the Romans from the supposedly impenetrable northern border. The exact route Hannibal took is unknown, although some geographic information can be gleaned from historical accounts such as those of the Roman writer Polybius. Armed with this information, and the knowledge that tens of thousands of men, horses and elephants must have left some trace, geoscientists are hunting down possible locations using deduction and chemistry to test hypotheses.

Boulder, Colo., USA - The August issue of Lithosphere presents papers that provide insights into Tyrrhenian margin neotectonics in Italy; the Wrangellia composite terrane in Canada; fault-related fissures on Gower Peninsula, Wales; blueschist facies rocks and serpentinites from Kochi in Shikoku Island, Japan; the Shuswap metamorphic complex in southern British Columbia; and paleo-Pacific plate subduction along northeastern China. Highlights are below.

Tilted pillars, cracked steps, and sliding stone canopies in a number of 7th-century A.D. temples in northwest India are among the telltale signs that seismologists are using to reconstruct the extent of some of the region's larger historic earthquakes.

In their report published online July 27 in Seismological Research Letters, Mayank Joshi and V.C. Thakur of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology show how the signs of destructive earthquakes are imprinted upon the ancient stone and wooden temples.

In computers of the future, information might be stored in the form of quantum bits. But how can a quantum bit be realised?

A research team from Germany, France and Switzerland has realised quantum bits, short qubits, in a new form. One day, they might become the information units of quantum computers.

Based on our everyday experience, we expect matter at low temperatures to freeze solid with the atoms fixed in a regular arrangement. The magnetic moments arising from the spins of the electrons on the atoms in magnetic materials, also come to rest and become rigidly oriented as temperature falls. However, there are some rare exceptions. In what are referred to as quantum spin liquids, the orientations of the electronic spins do not remain fixed even at temperatures near absolute zero.

At first glance, magnetite appears to be a rather inconspicuous grey mineral. But on an atomic scale, it has remarkable properties: on magnetite, single metal atoms are held in place, or they can be made to move across the surface. Sometimes several metal atoms on magnetite form small clusters. Such phenomena can dramatically change the chemical activity of the material. Atomic processes on the magnetite surface determine how well certain metal atoms can serve as catalysts for chemical reactions.

Water plays a major role for our planet not only in its liquid form at the surface. In the atmosphere too, it considerably affects our lives as well as weather and climate. Clouds and rainfall are one example. Water vapor, the gaseous form of water, also plays a prominent role on Earth. It is the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, without it the Earth would be a frozen planet. For climate variations, water vapor is particularly important in the stratosphere at altitudes between 15 and 50 kilometers.