News by Subject Earth Science

New geophysics research challenges the conventional view of how a vital and life-sustaining feature of weathered rock is created.

Groundwater is essential for growing crops, but new research shows climate change is making it harder for soil to absorb water from rainfall. While the idea that soil particles rearrange in response to environmental conditions is not new, scientists once thought these shifts happened slowly. Not anymore. New research shows increased rainfall reduces the rate water moves into soil, and that this change only takes a few years or decades, not centuries as previously assumed.

Nuclear reactors are still the primary source for strong neutron beams to create isotopes for geologic dating, radiography and medicine, but researchers at UC Berkeley have enlisted engineering students in building a tabletop neutron source that could be nearly as effective. A new study shows that the high flux neutron generator can date rocks as old as 1 million years, as well as fine-grained materials like lavas and clays, extending the usefulness of argon-argon dating.

Lightning superbolts -- which unleash a thousand times more low-frequency energy than regular lightning bolts -- occur in dramatically different patterns than regular lightning, according to a new, nine-year survey of these rare events.

In newly published research, an international team of geologists, geophysicists, and mathematicians show how coupled computer models can accurately recreate the conditions leading to the world's deadliest natural disasters of 2018, the Palu earthquake and tsunami, which struck western Sulawesi, Indonesia in September last year.