Geology & Geophysics
What Doomed the Stromatolites?
About a billion years before the dinosaurs became extinct, stromatolites roamed the Earth until they mysteriously disappeared. Well, not roamed exactly. Stromatolites (“layered rocks”) are rocky structures made by photosynthetic…
Read MoreA Quest For Resilient Reefs
Anne Cohen’s forte is corals. From the skeletons of massive corals, she has extracted long-term records of changing ocean and climate conditions. In lab experiments and expeditions, she is investigating…
Read MoreThe Harshest Habitats on Earth
With help from ROV Jason and a new, high-tech sampling instrument, scientists discover that even in a hyper-saline realm, with no light and no oxygen, under crushing pressure, life still finds a way.
Read MoreAn Ocean Instrument Is Born
Every new ocean instrument goes through growing pains. But the Submersible Incubation Device, nicknamed SID, has been a particularly long time coming. It started more than 30 years ago as…
Read MoreNew Explanation for Slow Earthquakes on San Andreas
New Zealand’s geologic hazards agency reported this week an ongoing, “silent” earthquake that began in January is still going strong. Though it is releasing the energy equivalent of a 7.0…
Read MoreScientists Find Possible Solution to an Ancient Enigma
The widespread disappearance of stromatolites, the earliest visible manifestation of life on Earth, may have been driven by single-celled organisms called foraminifera. The findings, by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic…
Read MoreScientists Explore Roots of Future Tropical Rainfall
How will rainfall patterns across the tropical Indian and Pacific regions change in a future warming world? Climate models generally suggest that the tropics as a whole will get wetter,…
Read MoreThe Black Sea is a Goldmine of Ancient Genetic Data
Black Sea, sediment, genetic data, past climate, Strait of Bosphorus, Liviu Giosan, Marco Coolen, paleo, DNA, dinocysts, dinoflagellate
Read MoreGlaciers Contribute Significant Iron to North Atlantic Ocean
All living organisms rely on iron as an essential nutrient. In the ocean, iron’s abundance or scarcity means all the difference as it fuels the growth of plankton, the base…
Read MoreFungi Flourish Below the Seafloor
Scientists have discovered a previously unknown diversity of fungi living far beneath the seafloor throughout the world’s oceans. “Walking in a forest, everyone knows how important fungi are on land…
Read MoreThe Synergy Project, Part II
Back in my high school, and maybe yours too, kids naturally separated into cliques—jocks, punks, preppies, hippies, and at the extremes of the mythical left- and right-hemisphere brain spectrum, nerds…
Read MoreThe Synergy Project
Back in my high school, and maybe yours too, kids naturally separated into cliques—jocks, punks, preppies, hippies, and at the extremes of the mythical left- and right-hemisphere brain spectrum, nerds…
Read MoreSeismic Studies Capture Whale Calls
In November 2012, the California Coastal Commission met to consider a request by Pacific Gas and Electric to study a geologic fault that runs along the central California coast just…
Read MoreStorms, Floods, and Droughts
The source of the rain that filled your town reservoir, or flooded your nearby river, or never arrived to water your crops, is most likely the ocean. The ocean contains…
Read MoreNew Weather-Shifting Climate Cycle Revealed
Scientists have uncovered evidence for another natural cycle that, like El Niño and La Niña, shifts Pacific Ocean winds and currents and rearranges rainfall and weather patterns around the globe.…
Read MoreDeep-sea Detectives
Links to related materials Mid-Ocean Ridges—Articles, illustrations, and video showing how new seafloor crust forms Mapping the Seafloor with Multibeam Sonar Profile of Marshall Swartz Story of the SDSL Data-Link…
Read MoreDeep-sea Detectives
Links to related materials Mid-Ocean Ridges—Articles, illustrations, and video showing how new seafloor crust forms Mapping the Seafloor with Multibeam Sonar Profile of Marshall Swartz Story of the SDSL Data-Link…
Read MoreDeep-sea Vents Yield New Species
Call it “midnight at the OASES.” Neither permanent darkness nor extreme pressure and heat cause problems for a host of new deep-sea species found in January by an international research…
Read MoreFollow the Carbon
“Carbon is the currency of life,” said David Griffith, a marine chemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). “Where carbon is coming from, which organisms are using it, how they’re…
Read MoreHuman Impact Felt on Black Sea Long Before Industrial Era
When WHOI geologist Liviu Giosan first reconstructed the history of how the Danube River built its delta, he was presented with a puzzle. In the delta’s early stages of development,…
Read MoreMentors for Budding Scientists
For the fourth consecutive year, local high school students interested in science spent part of their summer vacations working on projects undertaken with Delia Oppo’s lab at Woods Hole Oceanographic…
Read MoreClimate Change Spurred Fall of Ancient Culture
The Harappans may be the most advanced ancient civilization that most Westerners have never heard of. They flourished in the Indus River basin on the Indian subcontinent around the same…
Read MoreA Serendipitous Seafloor Sample
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation. The pillow lava display and coffee table were funded by the Deep Ocean Exploration Institute at WHOI.
Read MoreIn Search of the Pink and White Terraces
The dazzling Pink and White Terraces on the shores of Lake Rotomahana at one time were the greatest national treasure of New Zealand. They were cherished by the Maori and…
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